10 Pesos

This piece is recorded as a pattern — KM#PnA24 — struck in copper as a test or proposal rather than for general circulation. Chile's monetary system in 1878 was under considerable strain; the following year, the government suspended convertibility of paper currency amid the fiscal pressures of the War of the Pacific, a conflict that would consume the country through 1884. Whether this copper trial was connected to proposals for a debased or emergency coinage in anticipation of that crisis is not documented, but the timing is not easily dismissed.