10 Santeem - Haile Selassie I Obverse Trial

Trial pieces for this 1944 Ethiopian coinage were produced as part of the post-occupation monetary reconstruction following the expulsion of Italian forces in 1941. The British-administered mint work, coordinated largely through the Philadelphia Mint, was part of Haile Selassie's broader effort to restore a functioning Ethiopian currency after years of Italian lira imposition. Obverse trials in brass represent die-testing or compositional proofing stages that rarely escaped official channels, making survivors genuinely uncommon rather than merely scarce by collector convention.