200 Hryven Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra

Ukraine's first gold commemorative issues, released in 1996, came just five years after independence — a period when the National Bank was simultaneously fighting hyperinflation severe enough to render the karbovanets worthless and launching a new currency, the hryvnia, in September of that same year. Striking prestige gold in the middle of a monetary collapse was a deliberate act of institutional credibility.

The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, founded in 1051 by the monk Antoniy, was seized by Soviet authorities in 1926 and only returned to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1988. The Farouk reference places this among the earliest catalogued modern Ukrainian gold issues.