10 Centavos Galo Plaza

Ecuador has used the US dollar as its official currency since 2000, following a catastrophic sucre collapse driven by banking sector fraud, El Niño-related agricultural failures, and a drop in oil revenues that together wiped out much of the country's savings. These small-denomination stainless steel pieces are not legal tender in the conventional sense — they circulate as fractional convenience tokens, filling the gap that US coinage rarely fills in everyday Ecuadorian commerce. Galo Plaza Lasso, president from 1948 to 1952, oversaw the country's last sustained period of democratic stability before decades of instability followed.