25 Pul - Muhammed Zahir Shah smooth edge

Afghanistan's nickel-clad steel coinage of the early 1950s coincided with a period of cautious modernization under Zahir Shah, when the government was attempting to stabilize a currency that had suffered repeated debasements. The shift to clad coinage was partly a concession to postwar metal economics — solid nickel was simply too costly to sustain at scale.

The smooth edge distinguishes this from the reeded-edge variant struck during the same years, a production divergence that remains incompletely documented in the mint records of Da Afghanistan Bank.