Trial Strike 500 Pesos - Small Shield

Trial strikes from the Casa de Moneda de Chile occupy an awkward cataloging space — technically official products of the mint, but never authorized for circulation. This "Small Shield" variant documents an early design iteration in the development of the 500 peso bimetallic series, likely rejected before the production dies were finalized. The shield reduction itself suggests the engravers were testing proportional fits within the brass centre field, a recurring problem with bimetallic blanks where the color boundary imposes compositional constraints that flat single-metal flans do not.