10 Dollars Year of the Dog, Silver Piedfort

The piedfort format — struck at double the normal planchet thickness using the same dies as the standard issue — originated as a French mint tradition dating back to medieval times, used initially to produce presentation pieces for assaying and official record. Singapore's adoption of the format for its Lunar series placed it in the company of the Royal Mint and Monnaie de Paris, both of which had revived piedfort collecting in the early 1980s specifically to serve a growing numismatic market.

The 1994 Dog year holds particular resonance in Singapore's Chinese community, where the lunar calendar has never been purely ceremonial — the Housing Development Board documented measurable birth-rate fluctuations tied to auspicious years throughout the 1980s and 1990s.