100 Francs La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine's 1668 Fables drew heavily from Aesop and Phaedrus, but the French government's decision to honor him on currency came precisely 300 years after the first collected edition — a pattern of centenary and tercentenary commemoratives that dominated Monnaie de Paris programming throughout the 1990s. The series produced dozens of silver 100-franc pieces in this decade, many sharing the same specifications, which has kept secondary market premiums modest for all but the lowest-mintage issues.