5 Jiao

Taiwan's jiao denominations occupied an awkward middle ground throughout the 1970s — nominally useful but increasingly bypassed by inflation eroding their purchasing power. By the late 1970s, the New Taiwan Dollar had stabilized sufficiently that small-denomination coins like this one saw genuine circulation, though the jiao series as a whole was quietly discontinued by the early 1980s as the coins became economically redundant. The nickel-brass alloy was selected in part to resist the humid subtropical climate of the island, where earlier copper issues had corroded badly in circulation.