50 Euros Cosette

Issued to mark the 150th anniversary of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, first published in 1862. The Monnaie de Paris produced this as part of a broader commemorative program pairing French literary icons with precious metal issues — a series that generated considerable collector demand domestically but drew criticism from some quarters for leaning heavily on cultural nostalgia as a sales mechanism.

The .920 fineness is notably higher than the .900 gold standard used in most French bullion coinage of the twentieth century.