10 Lepta

Greece's first post-independence coinage had been silver and gold, issued under Kapodistrias, but the copper small denominations came later and under strained circumstances. By 1844, King Otto — a Bavarian placed on the Greek throne by the protecting powers — had just been forced at gunpoint to grant a constitution, ending his decade of absolute rule. The coins of this immediate post-constitutional period were struck under a government still finding its financial footing, heavily dependent on foreign loans that Greece had already defaulted on once.

KM#25 was struck at the Athens mint, which had opened only in 1836 and struggled chronically with consistent copper planchet quality throughout the 1840s.