10 Centavos

Bolivia's shift to copper-nickel coinage in the early 1890s followed the catastrophic loss of its coastal territories to Chile in the War of the Pacific, which ended in 1884. Stripped of the Atacama nitrate fields and its Pacific littoral, the country's silver-export economy was severely disrupted, and smaller fractional denominations increasingly moved away from precious metal. The copper-nickel 10 Centavos was part of that quiet monetary reorganization.

KM#172 was struck at the Heaton Mint in Birmingham — Bolivia's landlocked geography and depleted revenues made domestic small-coin production impractical for decades.