25 Yuan Panda

The Panda gold series launched in 1982 as a direct bid for foreign exchange revenue, timed to capitalize on Western collector markets that had been largely closed to Chinese state products for decades. By 1987, the series had established enough secondary market traction that the People's Bank of China began varying the panda design annually — a deliberate policy shift, starting that year, intended to drive annual turnover among collectors and prevent a stagnant secondary market from undermining new issue sales.

The annually changing reverse design is now the defining commercial mechanic of the entire series, and 1987 was the first year that policy was fully operative.