20 Centavos

Paraguay's coinage in this period was contracted out to the Heaton Mint in Birmingham, which struck the bulk of the country's small-denomination issues in the early twentieth century following decades of monetary instability rooted in the catastrophic War of the Triple Alliance. That conflict, ending in 1870, had killed an estimated 60–70% of Paraguay's male population and left the country financially hollowed out for a generation. The 1908 issues represent part of a slow reconstruction of a functioning domestic currency system.