The Banco Nacional de Costa Rica commissioned pattern coinage in the mid-1940s as part of a broader push to modernize the national currency system, with nickel being evaluated as a practical wartime and postwar alternative to silver. This piece never advanced to circulation — KM# Pn17 exists solely as a trial, and no corresponding circulation strike in this denomination and composition was authorized for 1946.
The Banco Nacional de Costa Rica commissioned pattern coinage in the mid-1940s as part of a broader push to modernize the national currency system, with nickel being evaluated as a practical wartime and postwar alternative to silver. This piece never advanced to circulation — KM# Pn17 exists solely as a trial, and no corresponding circulation strike in this denomination and composition was authorized for 1946.