200 000 Zlotys Stanislaw Staszic, Trial Strike

Staszic — geologist, philosopher, priest, and one of the more consequential Polish intellectuals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — was honored with this trial strike during a period when Poland's post-communist monetary system was collapsing under hyperinflation. By 1992, denominations in the hundreds of thousands were becoming routine, a direct consequence of the economic shock therapy introduced after 1989. Trial strikes from Mennica Polska during this transitional period were produced in limited numbers to test dies and planchets before committing to full production runs, and many were never formally released for circulation.