100 Yuan Panda

The 1994 Panda gold series sits in an interesting stretch of the program's history. Starting in 1992, the People's Bank of China abandoned fixed designs in favor of annually changing panda imagery — a deliberate strategy to drive collector demand and repeat purchases. It worked. The series became one of the most actively traded bullion-collector hybrids in the world through the 1990s, with Hong Kong dealers playing an outsized role in secondary market pricing before mainland Chinese collecting culture fully matured.

KM#615 corresponds to the one-ounce issue for this year. Mintage figures from the Chinese Mint for 1990s Pandas remain notoriously difficult to verify independently.