5 Francs Voltaire

Issued to mark the three-hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's birth, this coin was part of France's ongoing commemorative franc program in the years immediately preceding the euro transition — a period when the Monnaie de Paris produced commemoratives at a pace that has since made many of them difficult to move at meaningful premiums. Voltaire died in 1778, months after returning to Paris for the first time in nearly three decades, reportedly overwhelmed by the public adulation he received at the Comédie-Française.