500 Dram

Armenia's bimetallic coinage program of the early 2000s followed the country's broader effort to stabilize the dram after the currency's rocky introduction in 1993, when it replaced Soviet-era rubles amid severe post-independence economic contraction. The 500 dram denomination sat at a practical but awkward value point — too large for everyday small transactions, too small for meaningful savings — which limited its circulation life considerably.

KM#97 is occasionally encountered with uneven ring bonding, a known production inconsistency from this period of the Armenian mint's bimetallic output.