20 Centimes - Rainier III Piedfort Essai

Piéforts are not circulation strikes and were never intended to be. Monaco's essai piéfort program of the early 1960s produced these double-thickness gold pieces specifically for presentation and archival purposes — the Monégasque administration maintained a tradition of supplying such pieces to official collections, die archives, and select recipients within the French monetary union framework. Mintages for Monaco piéforts of this period are typically measured in the low dozens.

The Gadoury reference MC147 places this firmly within the recognized essai canon rather than pattern territory — a meaningful distinction for provenance purposes.