25 Centimes - Léopold III BELGIE-BELGIQUE

Belgium's 1938 coinage was produced in the shadow of a rearmament debate consuming the government — Leopold III had pivoted sharply toward neutrality that same year, publicly abandoning the Franco-Belgian military alliance in a policy shift that isolated Belgium diplomatically just as German pressure on its eastern neighbors intensified. The nickel brass alloy used here was itself a wartime hedge; Belgium had been quietly reformulating subsidiary coinage compositions through the mid-1930s to reduce dependence on imported metals.