100 Yuan Panda

The Chinese Gold Panda series abandoned a longstanding numismatic convention in 1982 by changing its reverse design annually — a deliberate policy decision that transformed what could have been a straightforward bullion program into a de facto collector series. By 2011, this practice had generated nearly three decades of distinct annual types, each with its own secondary market dynamics independent of gold spot price.

That year also marked one of the final issues before the People's Bank switched from troy ounce denominations to metric weights in 2016, a change that rendered pre-reform pieces like this one structurally incompatible with the redesigned series.