10 Reales White Metal Pattern

Paraguay in 1855 was still under the tightly controlled rule of Carlos Antonio López, who had only recently opened the country to limited foreign contact after decades of near-total isolation under his predecessor Francia. This pattern was almost certainly produced as part of López's broader effort to establish credible monetary infrastructure — Paraguay had no functioning domestic mint and relied heavily on foreign coinage. The piece never advanced to circulation, and production numbers were negligible by any measure.

The Pratt reference places it among a small cluster of Paraguayan pattern issues from this decade, most of which survive in single-digit quantities.