10 Centavos Pattern Strike

Honduras in 1871 was barely two decades past independence from the Central American Federation, with no functioning domestic mint and chronic difficulty attracting foreign minting contracts. This piece is almost certainly a presentation or approval strike produced to demonstrate a proposed coin type to Honduran authorities — a common practice when governments were negotiating with private mints or evaluating new monetary legislation. The gold-plated copper format is characteristic of pattern submissions intended for official review rather than circulation testing.

KM#Pn14a distinguishes this from the silver-composition pattern of the same design, Pn14.