100 Forint Ferenc Liszt

Issued to mark the 150th anniversary of Liszt's birth, this piece belongs to a short run of Hungarian gold commemoratives produced in the early 1960s under the Kádár government — an ideologically selective program that nevertheless embraced Liszt, whose international prestige made him useful propaganda regardless of political moment. Hungary had claimed Liszt as a national figure for over a century despite his ambivalent relationship with the country; he spoke little Hungarian and spent most of his adult life in Weimar and Rome.

The .986 fineness places it among the purest gold issues of the period from any Eastern Bloc mint.