50 Xu

The National Bank of Vietnam issued this coin during a period when the Saigon government was under acute pressure — 1963 ended with the assassination of President Ngô Đình Diệm in a US-backed coup on November 2nd, less than two months after his brother Ngô Đình Nhu orchestrated the raid on Buddhist pagodas across the country. Aluminium coinage of this denomination saw limited meaningful circulation as the parallel economy, fuelled by American military spending, increasingly dominated daily transactions in the South.