2 Lei - Carol I

Romania's silver coinage of this period was struck under contract at the Brussels mint, a consequence of the country lacking adequate domestic minting capacity following independence from Ottoman suzerainty in 1877. Carol I, a Hohenzollern prince installed by plebiscite in 1866, oversaw a monetary system built deliberately on the Latin Monetary Union framework — Romania never formally joined, but aligned its coinage standards precisely to maintain convertibility with French francs and Belgian francs across Balkan trade routes.

The .835 fineness is the Union's lower silver standard, adopted in 1874 to slow silver arbitrage draining finer coins from circulation.