1 Leu - Carol I

1881 marks the year Romania formally proclaimed itself a kingdom, with Carol I crowned as its first monarch following independence from Ottoman suzerainty recognized at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. This coin entered circulation in the kingdom's inaugural year — not a commemorative issue, but ordinary currency produced at the Brussels mint, which had struck Romanian coinage since the 1860s when the country lacked domestic minting infrastructure.

The .835 fineness matches the Latin Monetary Union standard Romania had aligned with, though the country never formally joined the union.