1/2 Cent - Elizabeth II 1st portrait

The British Caribbean Territories Currency Board was established in 1950 to provide a unified coinage for a loose grouping of colonies — Barbados, British Guiana, British Honduras, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Windward Islands — that had never before shared a single currency. The half-cent was the smallest denomination struck for the series and saw limited practical use almost immediately; rising prices in the postwar Caribbean economy made fractional cent values near-obsolete within years of issue.

All pieces were struck at the Royal Mint. The series was short-lived: the West Indies Federation, formed in 1958, eventually prompted the board's reorganization and the currency's replacement.