Panama's coinage has long been tied to the U.S. dollar at par, a monetary arrangement dating to the 1904 treaty that made American currency legal tender alongside Panamanian issues. Domestic coins were struck almost entirely at the Philadelphia and San Francisco mints during much of the twentieth century, with little independent minting infrastructure on Panamanian soil. The clad composition adopted for this series mirrored the contemporaneous shift in U.S. coinage away from silver, which Panama had no economic reason to resist given the parity relationship.
Justo Arosemena, the statesman honored on this denomination, was central to Panama's 1855 push for a federal state within the Republic of New Granada — a campaign that prefigured the eventual independence of 1903 by half a century.
Panama's coinage has long been tied to the U.S. dollar at par, a monetary arrangement dating to the 1904 treaty that made American currency legal tender alongside Panamanian issues. Domestic coins were struck almost entirely at the Philadelphia and San Francisco mints during much of the twentieth century, with little independent minting infrastructure on Panamanian soil. The clad composition adopted for this series mirrored the contemporaneous shift in U.S. coinage away from silver, which Panama had no economic reason to resist given the parity relationship.
Justo Arosemena, the statesman honored on this denomination, was central to Panama's 1855 push for a federal state within the Republic of New Granada — a campaign that prefigured the eventual independence of 1903 by half a century.