10 Yuan Panda

The 1994 issue falls within the period when the People's Bank of China was still changing the Panda design annually — a policy that began in 1982 and was suspended only in 2001 before resuming in 2016. That annual design rotation was a deliberate strategy to drive collector demand, and it worked; the series developed a substantial international following through the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in the United States and Germany.

The 1994 tenth-ounce was struck at the Shenzhen Guobao Mint. Authentication matters here — counterfeits of this series targeting the small-denomination gold issues proliferated in Asian secondary markets during the late 1990s.