1 Dinar - Hailé Selassié I Pattern

The 1931 dinar pattern belongs to a short-lived attempt to introduce a decimal coinage system into Ethiopia under Haile Selassie, who had been crowned Emperor just months earlier in November 1930. The project never advanced to circulation — Ethiopia retained the Maria Theresa thaler and its fractional silver pieces as the dominant trade currency, and the decimal reform stalled entirely before the Italian invasion of 1935 rendered the question moot.

Pattern pieces from this series are rare precisely because the denomination was abandoned, not merely modified. KM#Pn19 is among several dinar denominations struck in silver as proofs of concept, almost certainly at a European mint under contract.