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2 Drachmai - Constantine I Essai

Issuer Greece
Year 1915
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Value 2 Drachmai
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Obverse description Laureate head of King Constantine I facing left, wearing an olive wreath tied with a ribbon at the nape. The legend ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΤΩΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΩΝ curves around the upper periphery. The date 1915 appears in the lower exergue, flanked by the engraver's signature Κ. ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΑΔΗΣ to the right and the word ESSAI to the lower right, all within a finely beaded border.
Obverse script Greek, Latin
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Additional information

Greece's 1915 coinage sits at the epicenter of the Ethnikos Dichasmos — the National Schism — in which King Constantine I and Prime Minister Venizelos fought bitterly over whether Greece would enter the First World War on the side of the Entente. The essai for this denomination was produced but the regular issue never entered circulation, a casualty of the political paralysis that ultimately forced Constantine's abdication in 1917.

KM#E35 is among the scarcer Greek pattern issues of the period, with surviving examples almost certainly limited to mint and archival specimens.

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