1 Centime - Léopold II Dutch and French text, Pattern

Belgian pattern coins of this period were struck at the Brussels mint as internal trials, often exploring alternative metals for minor denominations that were expensive to produce in copper. Aluminium was attracting serious attention from European mints in the early 1880s as a candidate for low-denomination coinage — lightweight, resistant to corrosion, and cheap. Nothing came of it for Belgium's centime series; copper remained.

The Dutch-French bilingual type places this piece after the 1878 language legislation that mandated equal treatment of Dutch on official coinage, a politically charged compromise that took years to fully implement across all denominations.