1 Leu Mircea Eliade

Issued to mark the centenary of Eliade's birth, this coin entered circulation the same year Romania held its first major retrospective of his academic work since the communist period — decades during which his writings were effectively banned due to his association with the Iron Guard in the 1930s. That political history made any official Romanian commemoration of Eliade a complicated matter for most of the postwar period.

Tombac, a brass alloy, was the chosen substrate for Romania's collector-circulation crossover issues of this period rather than the cupro-nickel used elsewhere in the series.