10 Centimes - Norodom I Pattern

Norodom I signed the French protectorate treaty in 1863 under considerable duress, and the decades that followed saw France steadily strip the Cambodian court of administrative authority. Coinage was one visible front in that process. Pattern pieces like this one were produced as proposals for a colonial monetary system, most never approved for circulation — which explains both their rarity and their occasionally experimental specifications.

Fr#6a places this among the Frick-referenced Cambodian gold patterns, a tightly documented series with very few confirmed survivors outside major European auction houses.