100 Yuan Year of the Rabbit

China's lunar gold series, launched in 1981 with the Year of the Rooster, established the template that nearly every major mint worldwide would eventually imitate. The 1999 Rabbit is the final issue of the first full twelve-year lunar cycle in that series — a fact that drove collector demand at the time and pushed mintages lower than earlier issues in the run, as the People's Bank had by then shifted production emphasis toward the incoming second cycle designs.