300 Cruzeiros 150th Anniversary of Independence - Prova

Brazil's 150th independence anniversary in 1972 fell squarely under the military dictatorship of Emílio Médici, and the commemorative coin program that year was as much political theater as numismatic exercise. The prova designation marks this as an official strike produced for approval purposes — not a pattern in the experimental sense, but a pre-production specimen submitted through Brazil's Casa da Moeda review process before authorizing the circulation issue.

Provas from this Brazilian series are notoriously underrepresented in collections outside South America, with surviving quantities difficult to establish from mint records.