The ECU was never legal tender in Monaco in any practical sense — these issues were struck for the collector market, exploiting the unit of account status the European Currency Unit held prior to the euro's introduction. This particular piece commemorates the Montgolfier brothers' first untethered human balloon flight of November 1783, which departed from the Château de la Muette in Paris and covered roughly nine kilometers in around 25 minutes.
The applied color finish dates its production squarely within the early 1990s wave of colorized collector coins, a technique Monaco's mint exploited across several ECU issues during this period.
The ECU was never legal tender in Monaco in any practical sense — these issues were struck for the collector market, exploiting the unit of account status the European Currency Unit held prior to the euro's introduction. This particular piece commemorates the Montgolfier brothers' first untethered human balloon flight of November 1783, which departed from the Château de la Muette in Paris and covered roughly nine kilometers in around 25 minutes.
The applied color finish dates its production squarely within the early 1990s wave of colorized collector coins, a technique Monaco's mint exploited across several ECU issues during this period.