5 Cents - Wilhelmina Pattern

Pattern coinage for the Netherlands East Indies was rarely straightforward — colonial monetary decisions required approval through The Hague, and tin was a perennial candidate for low-denomination issues precisely because the archipelago produced it in quantity. This 1914 tin trial likely emerged from discussions about reducing silver content in the smaller denominations, a conversation that ran intermittently through the early twentieth century without resolution until much later.

Wilhelmina's long reign generated numerous experimental strikes that never reached circulation. The Scholt reference places this among a documented series of such trials, which is more than can be said for many colonial patterns that surface without provenance.