100 Zlotych Polish Millennium Trial Strike Ni with background

The 1960 Millennium series was commissioned to commemorate 1,000 years of Polish statehood — a politically loaded project under the PZPR government, which was simultaneously locked in a bitter dispute with the Catholic Church over who owned the Millennium's symbolism. The Church had its own parallel millennium celebrations planned, and the communist state used this coinage partly to assert a secular, national counter-narrative. Trial strikes in nickel like this piece were produced as part of the approval process before the final bronze issue was authorized.

The "with background" designation distinguishes this die state from the plain-field trial, referencing a specific surface treatment in the fields — a detail that separates at least two catalogued pattern variants, as reflected in the split Fischer and ParM references.