500 Colones Republic

Costa Rica's 500 colones bimetallic coin has been a workhorse of the circulating series since its introduction in the late 1990s, absorbing a denomination that inflation had rendered too inconvenient to handle in paper form. The Banco Central retired the corresponding banknote precisely because replacement costs for worn paper far exceeded the minting cost of a durable coin — a calculation repeated across Latin America during the same period.