10 Pesos

Colombia's monetary authority had been pushing toward larger-denomination circulating coinage through the late 1970s and into the 1980s as inflation steadily eroded the peso's purchasing power — by the mid-1980s, annual inflation was running above 20%. The nickel brass alloy chosen for this type was a deliberate cost-containment decision, balancing durability against the rising commodity value of higher-nickel compositions used in earlier issues.

The series ran nine years without a design change, which itself signals something: the Banco de la República had little appetite for the expense of re-tooling dies during a decade of persistent fiscal pressure.