50 Centavos

Copiapó's locally-issued coinage of 1859 was a direct consequence of the silver and copper mining boom in Chile's Atacama region — the same economic explosion triggered by the 1832 silver strike at Chañarcillo, one of the richest silver deposits found anywhere in the Americas during the nineteenth century. With the national mint in Santiago unable to supply sufficient small change to the rapidly expanding northern mining economy, the city took the extraordinary step of issuing its own municipal coinage, an act with almost no parallel in Chilean monetary history.

KM#1 is the sole type attributed to this issuer.