1 Peso

Copiapó's municipal coinage of 1859 was an emergency measure born directly from the silver mining boom in Chile's Atacama region. The city sat at the heart of the Chañarcillo silver rush — discovered in 1832 — and by mid-century the region was producing enough silver to dwarf the national mint's supply capacity. When coin shortages became acute, local authorities took the extraordinary step of issuing their own municipal currency, one of the very few Chilean cities ever to do so.

KM#2 distinguishes this peso from the KM#1 issue of the same year by die differences documented in South American reference literature. Both are genuinely scarce; municipal silver of this weight and local authority is not a type that turns up casually.