2 Céntimos

Costa Rica's small-denomination coinage of this period was struck under contract at the Heaton Mint in Birmingham, which supplied much of Central America's circulating coinage when local minting infrastructure was nonexistent or insufficient. The 1903 issue came during a stretch of relative monetary stability following the coffee boom that had reshaped the country's economy in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The copper-nickel alloy was a deliberate departure from the pure copper used in earlier fractional issues — chosen for durability in tropical circulation conditions where copper coins notoriously corroded.