1000 Zlotys Casimir III the Great, Trial Strike

Casimir III — the only Polish king history has called "the Great" — died in 1370 without a legitimate male heir, ending the Piast dynasty after over four centuries. This trial strike is part of a broader commemorative program the NBP ran through the 1980s, issuing collector pieces during a period when Poland's official currency was effectively fictional: the złoty was inconvertible, black-market exchange rates ran ten to twenty times the official rate, and hard-currency Pewex stores rendered the coins themselves largely ceremonial.

Trial strikes of this type were produced in limited numbers for approval purposes and differ from the circulation or proof issues in surface finish and sometimes alloy batch.