100 Francs Kings, French text - Essai

The 1948 "Kings" essai was part of Belgium's postwar effort to rebuild its coinage infrastructure after German occupation had gutted the monetary system. Trial pieces in this series were struck to evaluate competing designs for a high-denomination silver circulation issue — a denomination that ultimately never entered regular production in this form. The Banque Nationale commissioned multiple essais from different designers, and the absence of standard catalog numbers for this piece reflects how thoroughly documentation of the trial series was scattered or lost in the administrative chaos of the late 1940s reconstruction period.