1 Centavo Essai

The 1892 Dominican essai coinage was part of a broader effort to establish a modern national currency following decades of monetary instability — the republic had cycled through Spanish, Haitian, and improvised domestic currencies since independence in 1844. Aluminium was a fashionable experimental metal for trial pieces in the 1890s, its novelty value still high before industrial-scale production collapsed the price.

KM#E22 was never adopted for circulation. The centavo denomination would eventually be struck in bronze.