1 Gramo

Julius Popper was a Romanian-born engineer who arrived in Tierra del Fuego in 1887, struck gold on the Atlantic coast, and promptly behaved as though he had founded a sovereign state. He issued these gold gramos as a private currency for use within his mining operation, El Páramo — backed by the very gold his workers were extracting from the beach placers. Argentine authorities tolerated the arrangement uneasily. Popper died in Buenos Aires in 1893, aged 35, and the operation collapsed shortly after, leaving these pieces with no redemption path and no issuing authority still standing.