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20 Cents - Victoria
| Issuer | Mauritius |
|---|---|
| Year | 1877-1899 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Crowned and draped effigy of Queen Victoria facing left, engraved by Leonard Charles Wyon. The Queen wears a small coronet set over flowing hair, with a ribbon tied at the nape of the neck. The legend VICTORIA QUEEN is arranged in two arcs flanking the portrait, reading upward on the left and downward on the right. A fine dentillated border frames the entire obverse field. The mintmark H, denoting Heaton and Sons, Birmingham, appears on some issues below the truncation. |
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| Mint | Royal Mint (Tower Hill), London, United Kingdom (1810-1975) H - Heaton and Sons / The Mint Birmingham (Heaton and Sons / The Mint Birmingham Limited), United Kingdom (1850-2003) |
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| Additional information |
Mauritius adopted a decimal currency system in 1877, replacing the older rupee-based fractional coinage with a new series tied directly to the Indian rupee at parity. The 20-cent denomination was peculiar to the island — no equivalent piece circulated in Britain or most other colonial possessions — reflecting the specific small-transaction needs of a sugar-export economy dependent on indentured labor from India and Madras following emancipation in 1835.
The .800 silver standard rather than sterling .925 was a deliberate cost reduction, matching the fineness used across several contemporary British colonial issues in Asia and the Indian Ocean.