1 Peso Pattern

Cuba's 1870 peso pattern was struck in Madrid as part of Spain's effort to design a colonial coinage for the island following the monetary reforms prompted by the Glorious Revolution of 1868. The timing was politically fraught — the Ten Years' War had been grinding through Cuba since October of that year, and a standardized colonial currency was as much an administrative assertion of control as anything else.

Patterns from this issue never advanced to circulation. Full production coinage for Cuba would not materialize until 1897, leaving the 1870 pieces as isolated trial strikes with no issued counterpart.