10 Yuan Romance of Three Kingdoms - Man on a balcony

The "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" silver series ran through much of the 1990s, issued by the People's Bank of China as part of a broader push into the collector coin market that also included literary classics like Dream of the Red Chamber and Water Margin. Each release drew on the 14th-century novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong, itself a heavily romanticized retelling of the actual Three Kingdoms period of 220–280 AD. The 1997 installment was among the later entries in the run, by which point secondary market premiums on earlier issues had already established the series as a reliable collectible.

Mintages on these issues were tightly controlled, typically in the low tens of thousands.