50 Centavos

Colombia's fiscal instability through the late 1950s and early 1960s — driven in part by coffee price volatility and the political violence of La Violencia — pressured the government into repeatedly reassessing its subsidiary coinage. This copper-nickel issue replaced an earlier silver-bearing type as silver recovery from circulation became economically untenable. The Bogotá mint struck these across nearly a decade with minimal design revision, an unusual stretch of continuity for a country that changed its coinage with considerable frequency during this period.