1 Cent - Mswati III 2nd portrait

Mswati III's second effigy on Swazi coinage marked a deliberate updating of the king's portrait following his 1986 coronation at age 18 — the first portrait having been struck when he was still a teenager. Bronze-plated steel replaced the earlier solid bronze composition as a straightforward cost-reduction measure, a shift common across southern African minor coinage in the early 1990s as commodity prices and minting budgets diverged.