100 Lei - Carol II Pattern

Pattern coinage from interwar Romania occupies a peculiar space — pieces struck for approval that never translated into circulation issues, often surviving in tiny quantities across a handful of institutional and private collections. This 1939 date places it in the final months before Romania's position became untenable under competing German and Soviet pressure, with Carol II increasingly relying on his royal dictatorship, established in 1938, to hold the country together.

The gold-clad bronze construction is characteristic of approval strikes intended to simulate the appearance of a gold circulation coin without the material cost of producing multiple full-gold specimens for committee review.