10 Cents Long-Tailed Hermit, Copper-Nickel

Belize issued its first independent coinage in 1974, one year after severing its currency ties to the British Honduras dollar. The Franklin Mint held the production contract through much of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the quality of strikes from this period reflects that arrangement — clinically clean fields and unusually consistent planchet preparation for a small Caribbean nation's circulating coinage.