20 Centavos

Chile's silver coinage of the 1850s was produced under chronic minting pressure at the Santiago Casa de Moneda, which struggled to keep pace with demand driven by the country's booming silver exports from the Atacama region. The irony was pointed: Chile was one of the world's leading silver producers yet consistently failed to maintain adequate coin supply in domestic circulation.

This type was struck across eight years but surviving examples cluster heavily toward the later dates, suggesting early issues saw harder circulation or lower initial mintages. The 1852 remains the most elusive of the run.