50 Francs - Charlotte John the Blind, Essai

Luxembourg's postwar monetary reorganization prompted a series of pattern strikes in 1946, none of which entered circulation. This gold essai was produced as Charlotte sought to reassert institutional continuity after five years of Nazi occupation — the Grand Duchy's gold reserves had been evacuated to France and then Canada in 1940, and the entire currency framework required reconstruction from the ground up.

The John the Blind commemorative pairing was deliberate: the blind king who died at Crécy in 1346 carried an almost mythological weight in Luxembourg national identity, particularly useful at a moment when that identity needed reasserting. The essai never advanced to a minting proposal.