50 Centimes

Haiti's early republican coinage was chronically underfunded and inconsistently produced, with the state mint at Port-au-Prince struggling to maintain reliable metal supplies throughout the 1820s. The copper issues of this period often drew from whatever stock was available, which accounts for the compositional variants catalogued under KM#20 and its subtype designations.

By 1828, President Boyer had held power for nearly a decade, but the country was financially strained by the 1825 indemnity agreement with France — 150 million francs demanded in exchange for diplomatic recognition — a debt that would cripple Haitian public finances for generations.