Quote: "PetrusAscanus"If you browse Krause, you will find a lot of these low-minted coins.
Many small countries have such coins. They are made for collectors, so they get money from outside in the country.
Isle of Man has a lot of these, or Somalia....
I think you coin is one of them.
It can be indeed a private issue, like Sir Rowland Hill makes them.
http://www.srh-ltd.be/nl/shop/munten-medailles/
This house http://www.munthuis.be/shop/thema/tijdperk-van-de-belgische-frank.html sells coins that should be made with the original dies.
If you see the replicas and the Original coins together, you easely can see it is not true.
In the UK everyone can make medals and coin replicas.
Moldova is indeed a fairly small country, however it is very unlikely to be the case of getting money from outside in the country. I don't say it is impossible, but in our country, as I mentioned earlier, the only authority for issuing money is the National Bank od Moldova, unless someone made a medal for himself, or how BryanJ mentioned, it has never been issued.
The case of UK, where as PetrusAscanus sais, "everyone can make medals and coin replicas" , is deffinitely not applicable for Moldova.
My conclusion so far is that it is a mistake in Krause catalog.
P.S. By the way, Moldova is bigger than Belgium by around 3,000 km2.