100 Zlotys Wawel Castle of Krakow, Trial Strike

Trial strikes from Mennica Polska in the 1970s occupy an odd bureaucratic niche: produced for internal approval and submission to the state monetary authority, they were never intended to reach collectors, yet many survived precisely because mint employees retained them informally. The Wawel Castle series was part of a broader push by the Polish People's Republic to issue collector-targeted commemoratives as a hard-currency earner — coins sold abroad through Pewnex and similar state export channels while domestic circulation saw little of them.

The nickel composition distinguishes this trial from the approved silver issue, a deliberate substitution to test die performance before committing to production metal.