5 Yuan Li Bai

This piece belongs to China's early commemorative silver program, which launched in earnest in the mid-1980s as the People's Bank began courting international collector markets — a sharp pivot for a government that had suppressed private coin collecting entirely during the Cultural Revolution just a decade prior. Li Bai, the Tang Dynasty poet, was a politically safe choice: celebrated enough to carry international name recognition, deceased long enough to avoid ideological complications.

KM#174 is frequently encountered with uneven luster in the fields, a known characteristic of the series rather than mishandling.