Portuguese Guinea received its first dedicated colonial coinage in 1933, prior to which the territory had relied on Portuguese metropolitan issues and, informally, on coins circulating from neighboring French and British West African colonies. The 1933 series — of which this 10 Centavos is part — was authorized under Salazar's newly consolidated Estado Novo financial reforms, which pushed for distinct territorial currency identities across the Portuguese African possessions as an administrative assertion of colonial control.
KM#2 was struck at the Lisbon mint. The bronze composition proved poorly suited to the humid Guinea coast, and surviving examples with clean surfaces are genuinely scarce.
Portuguese Guinea received its first dedicated colonial coinage in 1933, prior to which the territory had relied on Portuguese metropolitan issues and, informally, on coins circulating from neighboring French and British West African colonies. The 1933 series — of which this 10 Centavos is part — was authorized under Salazar's newly consolidated Estado Novo financial reforms, which pushed for distinct territorial currency identities across the Portuguese African possessions as an administrative assertion of colonial control.
KM#2 was struck at the Lisbon mint. The bronze composition proved poorly suited to the humid Guinea coast, and surviving examples with clean surfaces are genuinely scarce.