1000 Zlotys Papacy, Gold Bullion

Issued in 1989, the final year of communist rule in Poland, this piece occupies an awkward political moment: a state mint producing a gold coin honoring the papacy while the government that authorized it was weeks away from collapse. The Round Table Agreement was signed in April of that year, partially free elections followed in June, and the Polish United Workers' Party ceased to exist before 1990 was out.

John Paul II's Polish origins made papal commemoratives a perpetual tension for the communist authorities throughout the 1980s — tolerated partly because hard-currency export sales were too valuable to refuse.