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10 Yuan Unicorn
| Issuer | People's Republic of China |
|---|---|
| Year | 1997 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Reference(s) | KM#1032 |
| Obverse description | Against a mirror-proof field, a finely detailed qilin (Chinese unicorn) strides vigorously to the right atop stylized auspicious clouds, its scaled body, flowing mane, and flame-like appendages rendered in high relief. A smaller qilin cub appears below and to the right, also set among clouds, accompanied by the two-character inscription 麒麟 to the right of the main figure. The circular legend 中华人民共和国 (People's Republic of China) arcs around the upper portion of the field, and the date 1997 appears in the lower exergue. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A prancing Western-style unicorn, adorned with a floral garland around its neck and a single spiraling horn, is depicted in high relief at the center of the mirror-proof field, moving to the left with its tail flowing behind it. Scattered floral and foliate ornaments surround the central motif. The bilingual legend 祖传物麒麟 UNICORN arcs across the upper field in Chinese and Latin script respectively. The denomination 10 元 is inscribed in bold characters at the lower center of the field. |
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| Additional information |
The Chinese Unicorn series ran for only a handful of years in the 1990s before being discontinued, making it one of the shorter-lived bullion programs from the Shanghai and Shenzhen mints. The 1997 issue appeared in the final stretch of that run, the same year sovereignty over Hong Kong transferred from Britain to China — a moment the mint marked across several commemorative programs, though the Unicorn series itself remained separate from those issues.
Low original mintages relative to the Panda series have made surviving Unicorn pieces genuinely difficult to source in quantity.