10 Dinars

Algeria's bimetallic coinage program launched in the early 1990s coincided with one of the most violent periods in the country's post-independence history — the cancellation of the 1991 legislative elections triggered a civil conflict that claimed an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 lives over the following decade. Coins circulated through that period with the mundane persistence that small change always manages.

The aluminium-magnesium centre was an unusual material choice for the denomination, selected partly for its resistance to the oxidation problems that had plagued earlier Algerian issues in humid coastal circulation.