20 Centavos

Ecuador had struck its 20 centavos in silver through much of the early twentieth century, but wartime metal shortages pushed the country toward copper-nickel for subsidiary coinage during the 1940s. The 1946 issue falls within a transitional stretch when the Banco Central del Ecuador was managing chronic inflationary pressure tied to export volatility in cacao and balsa wood — commodities that had briefly boomed during the war years and were now contracting.

The KM#77.1b designation distinguishes this from earlier alloy variants in the same basic type, a distinction that matters more to type collectors than the catalog description suggests.