2 Centavos

Bolivia's copper centavo series of the 1870s was produced at a moment when the country's silver-dominated monetary system was under serious strain. The War of the Pacific broke out in 1879 — just one year after this piece was struck — and the resulting loss of Bolivia's coastal territory to Chile effectively ended the country's access to its primary nitrate revenues and disrupted mint operations at Potosí for years afterward. Surviving examples from 1878 represent some of the last coinage struck before that territorial catastrophe reshaped Bolivian economic policy entirely.