10 Centavos No number on obverse, billon .400

Chile's billon coinage of this period emerged from a sustained monetary crisis rooted in the country's abandonment of the gold standard in 1878, which left the peso in decades of managed depreciation. By the time these pieces were struck, the silver content had been progressively debased to the point where the distinction between billon and base metal was largely academic in daily commerce. The Santiago mint — Casa de Moneda — had been the sole authorized producer of Chilean coinage since the colonial period, and production continuity masked just how dramatically the metal value had eroded.

The KM#156.2a designation distinguishes this type by the absence of a numeral on the obverse, a modification introduced to differentiate die varieties within the same emission series.