5 Centavos

By 1983, Argentina was minting aluminium coinage against a backdrop of monetary collapse — the peso had been losing value so rapidly that metal costs for older alloys routinely exceeded face value. This 5 centavos piece belongs to the terminal phase of the peso argentino, a currency introduced in 1983 to replace the peso at 10,000-to-one, itself already a replacement denomination. The civilian government of Raúl Alfonsín inherited the wreckage that same year, and the aluminium coinage he inherited was already economically irrelevant by the time it left the mint.