1918 10 Centimes (Lindauer, holed bronze)

The Lindauer 10 centimes is one of the most quietly iconic French coins of the 20th century. Designed by the engraver Edmond-Émile Lindauer and introduced in 1917 to replace the older Daniel-Dupuis bronze, it was struck in enormous quantities through 1938: a small holed bronze with the bold cipher RF (République Française) inside a dense wreath of oak and laurel on one side, and the denomination 10 C[entim]ES with LIBERTÉ · ÉGALITÉ · FRATERNITÉ above and the date 1918 below on the other. The central piercing was a wartime economy - less metal per coin, instantly distinguishable from neighbouring denominations by touch alone, an important consideration in the trenches and in poorly lit shops during the blackout years of the First World War.

In 1918 alone the Paris Mint struck more than 30 million pieces, and across the full 1917-1938 run of the design more than a billion 10 centimes Lindauer entered circulation. The design is therefore one of the most common French coins in existence - the kind of pocket-change piece that turns up in every dealer's junk box, almost always worn smooth, almost always corroded, almost always brown. Which is exactly what makes this example so extraordinary.

NGC MS 68 is not just the finest known 1918 - it is the single finest known example of the entire Lindauer 10 centimes design across more than two decades and over a billion coins struck. Both surfaces carry the kind of full, gem, all-natural rainbow toning that simply cannot be faked: warm ambers and roses bleeding through to teals and lavenders across full original mint bloom, with every detail of the wreath, the cipher, and the wheat-and-laurel border still as crisp as the moment it left the dies. This is the colour bronze develops only when a coin is set aside in the right kind of paper or album for a century and never touched again - the antithesis of the chemical "rainbow" toning that coin doctors try to add to artificially raise grades.

A coin like this is a reminder that condition rarity, in the right hands, can turn even the most "common" issue into a singular object. Out of more than a billion coins, exactly one survived in this state.