50 Centavos Pattern, Palenque, Steel

Mexican pattern coinage of the early 1980s emerged from a period of serious monetary pressure — peso devaluation was accelerating, and the Banco de México was actively testing cheaper base-metal compositions to reduce production costs ahead of inevitable reforms. This steel trial for the 50 centavos, struck at the Casa de Moneda, was part of that broader compositional testing program and never advanced to circulation.

The Palenque designation in Palomino's reference catalog distinguishes this from contemporaneous brass and aluminum trials struck for the same denomination in the same period.