1/2 Pahlavī - Mohammad Rezā Pahlavī

The half Pahlavi gold series spans a politically turbulent stretch of Mohammad Reza Shah's reign, bracketed at one end by the 1953 CIA- and MI6-backed coup that restored him to power after Mosaddegh's nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and at the other by the oil boom years when Iran's gold coinage became a domestic savings instrument for a rapidly urbanizing middle class. Bank Melli issued these not merely as bullion but as the preferred store of household wealth in a country where banking trust remained thin.

The Pahlavi denomination had been introduced by Reza Shah in 1926 specifically to replace the older Toman-based gold coinage — a deliberate modernization tied to his broader program of Westernizing state institutions.