60 Gourdes Alexandre Petion, Obverse Trial

This is an obverse trial piece for the 60 Gourdes series issued under François Duvalier, struck during a period when Haiti's mint relationships ran almost entirely through foreign contractors — the Franklin Mint in Pennsylvania handled production of the commemorative gourdes series in this period. Trial pieces like this one were submitted for approval before full production runs, making them documentation of a manufacturing process rather than circulating money.

Duvalier declared himself President-for-Life in 1964, and the commemorative coinage of the late 1960s was in part a revenue instrument, marketed to foreign collectors with little expectation of domestic circulation.