10 Bani - Carol I

Romania's copper-nickel coinage of this period was produced almost entirely at foreign mints — the Hamburg mint (Hamburgische Münze) struck the bulk of the 1900 issue, as Romania still lacked sufficient domestic minting capacity for base-metal coinage. Carol I had staked considerable political capital on building a modern monetary infrastructure after independence from Ottoman suzerainty in 1877, and these small-denomination pieces were the workhorse of everyday commerce in a largely agrarian economy where banknotes rarely changed hands below the village level.