1 Peso Pattern - France

In the early 1990s, Argentina was rebuilding monetary credibility from scratch after the catastrophic hyperinflation of the late 1980s had rendered the austral worthless. The 1991 Convertibility Law pegged the new peso one-to-one with the US dollar, and coin design became a surprisingly political exercise — multiple pattern submissions were evaluated before the final production type was settled. This piece represents the French proposal, one of at least two competing bimetallic configurations considered before Buenos Aires committed to the issued design.

The France attribution refers to the Monnaie de Paris as the originating mint for this pattern submission.