Austrian 1898 20 Corona

The most intriguing fact about the so-called Austrian 1898 20 Corona is that, as a gold coin, it represented the empire's attempt to align its currency with the Latin Monetary Union standards, featuring a portrait of Emperor Franz Joseph that subtly echoed classical Roman designs. I'm not confident, however, that a silver version ever existed; the standard 20 Corona was struck in gold, and references to a "silver crown" might stem from confusion with lower-denomination silver pieces like the 5 or 10 Corona. Over my thirty years examining these, I've never encountered a verified silver 20 Corona from 1898, though it's possible some experimental strikes were made and lost to history. Mintage figures for the gold variant are documented elsewhere, but for any silver counterpart, records remain unclear—perhaps destroyed in one of the empire's many archival mishaps. As for jokes, let's just say that if it were silver, it might have been the empire's way of skimping on the gold rush.