200 Zlotys XIII Winter Olympics, torch below skier

Issued to mark the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, this coin arrived at a moment of acute domestic pressure for the Polish state. The year of issue coincided with the Gdańsk strikes and the formation of Solidarity — the Polish mint was producing commemorative silver for an international sporting event while the country's political foundations were cracking beneath it. Hard currency commemoratives of this period were minted partly for export sale, generating foreign exchange the government desperately needed.

The .750 fineness is notably lower than the .925 used for many contemporary Polish silver commemoratives, a quiet concession to silver prices that spiked sharply in 1979–1980 during the Hunt Brothers' market corner.