Swiss 100 Francs Palladium

This Swiss 100 Francs coin was struck in palladium, a metal so rare in coinage that most national mints avoided it entirely, opting instead for the more predictable gold or silver.

That makes it part of Switzerland's brief foray into palladium issues from 1988 to 1990. The design featured a simple alpine motif, typical of Swiss commemoratives, with the denomination on the reverse. We know the Swiss Federal Mint produced these as bullion coins, but exact mintage figures are murky; records from that era weren't always kept with the precision you'd expect.

Palladium's high melting point meant these coins required specialized techniques, which probably bored the mint workers as much as it intrigues collectors today.

If you're wondering about the metal's value, it fluctuated wildly even back then, turning what was meant as a stable investment into something more like a gamble.