1 Sentimo

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas issued this aluminium sentimo during a decade that opened with Ferdinand Marcos still in power and closed well into the Corazon Aquino restoration. Aluminium was chosen for the lowest denomination purely on cost grounds — the metal value had to stay meaningfully below face value, a calculation that had already defeated earlier bronze and steel experiments at this size. By the late 1980s, the sentimo's purchasing power had eroded so thoroughly that most Filipinos simply stopped using it.