10 Pa'anga - Taufa'ahau Tupou IV Sailboat with national flags, Palladium Proof issue

Tonga's 1987 palladium issues were among the earliest sovereign palladium proof coins struck anywhere in the world, appearing just as the metal was beginning to attract serious attention from both investors and mint programs. The timing was deliberate — Taufa'ahau Tupou IV actively pursued novel coinage programs as a revenue strategy, and palladium's novelty made it a marketable proposition for collector markets in Japan and North America.

Mintages for this series were extremely low, and KM#126a remains one of the harder pieces to locate from Tonga's otherwise well-documented proof programs of the period.