50 Groszy small date

The "small date" variety emerged from inconsistent punch preparation at the Warsaw Mint during the mid-1980s, a period when Poland's centrally planned economy was straining under the weight of the debt crisis and the aftermath of martial law. Two distinct date logotypes were used across the 1986–1987 run, making die attribution the only reliable way to differentiate this variety from its large-date counterpart — a distinction the catalog references above encode but rarely explain.