100 000 Soles de Oro Miguel Grau

Miguel Grau Seminario, the Peruvian naval commander who became a national hero during the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), was commemorated with this coin on the centennial of that conflict. Grau commanded the ironclad Huáscar and repeatedly outmaneuvered the Chilean navy before his death at the Battle of Angamos in October 1879 — an engagement in which the Huáscar was finally captured after sustaining overwhelming fire from two Chilean armored vessels.

The coin was issued the same year Peru formally marked the war's centenary, a politically charged moment given the territorial losses — Tarapacá, Arica, and Tacna — that still shaped Peruvian national identity a full century later.