50 Cents - George V

Ceylon's silver coinage of this period was struck at the Royal Mint in London, part of a broader British colonial monetary framework that kept local currency production firmly off the island. The .800 fineness was a deliberate step down from sterling, a policy applied across several Crown Colony issues in the early twentieth century to reduce silver content without triggering public resistance to an overt debasement.

KM#109 spans a four-year window that includes the opening of World War I, when global silver demand spiked and colonial mint allocations were periodically disrupted by wartime priorities.