50 Centimos Transitional Coinage

Peru's shift from the old colonial real system to decimal coinage was neither clean nor instantaneous. The 1858–1859 transitional issues bridged two monetary regimes, struck in the same Lima mint facilities that had been operating under Spanish colonial administration and then republican management for decades. The decimal system had been legislated in 1857, but physical production lagged behind policy, and these pieces circulated alongside reales of incompatible denomination structure.

KM#179 is notably short-lived — superseded within two years as the full decimal series stabilized.