10 Cents

KM#48a reflects the Central Bank's mid-2000s shift from solid brass to brass-plated steel across its circulating series — a cost-reduction measure adopted by numerous small island economies as global copper and zinc prices spiked sharply after 2004. The Seychelles rupee had itself been through considerable turbulence: a rigid peg to a basket of currencies collapsed in 2008 when the government ran out of foreign exchange reserves, forcing an IMF-backed float that saw the rupee lose roughly half its official value almost overnight.

These plated-steel pieces are prone to delamination in humid tropical conditions, making fully intact examples from late in the 2007–2012 run harder to find than mintage figures alone would suggest.