500 Yuan Spring Greeting

This five-ounce gold issue belongs to China's Lunar New Year series, which the People's Bank of China launched in the 1980s as part of a broader push into the international bullion commemorative market. The 1998 piece corresponds to the Year of the Tiger. Production was tightly limited, as was standard for the series, and these coins were distributed primarily through foreign coin dealers and auction houses rather than domestic retail channels — the intended buyer was never the Chinese citizen.

KM#1180 is the five-ounce denomination within a multi-coin set issued that year, the largest and lowest-mintage piece of the group.