40 000 Kip - Savang Vatthana Coronation

Savang Vatthana's coronation in 1959 was delayed for years following his father Sisavang Vong's death in 1959 — the timing considered inauspicious amid mounting civil conflict between the Royal Lao Government and the Pathet Lao. This gold issue, struck in 1971, commemorates that coronation over a decade after the fact, by which point the kingdom was already in serious jeopardy. Savang Vatthana would prove to be Laos's last monarch; the Pathet Lao abolished the monarchy in 1975 and placed him under house arrest, where he died in a re-education camp sometime around 1978.