5 Centavos Pattern

The 1908 Chilean pattern coinage emerged during a period of serious monetary reform debate, as the country wrestled with decades of inconvertible paper currency following the suspension of gold convertibility in 1878. The Casa de Moneda was experimenting with copper-nickel for subsidiary denominations as part of a broader push to restabilize the circulating currency system — proposals that would not fully resolve until the 1925 monetary reform under pressure from the Kemmerer Commission.

KM#PnA26 records this as an unaccepted trial. The design was rejected, and Chile continued striking silver centavo denominations before eventually abandoning the denomination structure altogether.