Part of the long-running Monnaie de Paris series pairing Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novella with French cultural landmarks, this issue was released under a licensing arrangement with the Saint-Exupéry estate. The series launched in 2015 and expanded annually, targeting the collector gift market rather than circulation — billon at .333 fineness places it firmly in the commemorative-but-affordable tier, below the .900 silver issues in the same program.
Saint-Exupéry himself disappeared over the Mediterranean in July 1944 on a reconnaissance mission, and the manuscript rights passed through complicated inheritance disputes before the estate consolidated control in the 1990s.
Part of the long-running Monnaie de Paris series pairing Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novella with French cultural landmarks, this issue was released under a licensing arrangement with the Saint-Exupéry estate. The series launched in 2015 and expanded annually, targeting the collector gift market rather than circulation — billon at .333 fineness places it firmly in the commemorative-but-affordable tier, below the .900 silver issues in the same program.
Saint-Exupéry himself disappeared over the Mediterranean in July 1944 on a reconnaissance mission, and the manuscript rights passed through complicated inheritance disputes before the estate consolidated control in the 1990s.