Poland's "Cities and Regions" bimetallic series ran for years, but the Nordic gold collector pieces — issued as legal tender at face value — were a deliberate policy decision by NBP to fund cultural documentation through seigniorage rather than through the state budget. Mazowieckie Voivodeship was one of the largest administrative units created in the 1999 reform that collapsed Poland's 49 smaller provinces into 16, a reorganization that proved contentious in regions that lost their provincial capitals.
Poland's "Cities and Regions" bimetallic series ran for years, but the Nordic gold collector pieces — issued as legal tender at face value — were a deliberate policy decision by NBP to fund cultural documentation through seigniorage rather than through the state budget. Mazowieckie Voivodeship was one of the largest administrative units created in the 1999 reform that collapsed Poland's 49 smaller provinces into 16, a reorganization that proved contentious in regions that lost their provincial capitals.