I don't come across many of these...1958 silver peso. (...) Mostly brass...but still interesting.
What I like about modern Mexicans is that so many of them are common that they are under-appreciated. This coin is a good example. The officially specified composition of this coins is .700 Copper, .100 Nickel, .100 Zinc and .100 Silver, so it's more copper-nickel than anything else. And yet, people call it silver. The explanation is that the silver was driven to the surface. This is an old technique. It was known in Roman times and used extensively under Henry VIII, whose disastrous wars against France caused high inflation.
The advantage of having the silver on the surface is that it looks like a silver coin. The disadvantage is that when the coin starts to wear, the dominating metal becomes visible, on the highest points first. This phenomenon explains the nickname "old coppernose" for Henry VIII, who was pictured full face on his coins
This type of coin is remarkable for another reason, though. Mexico is the world's largest silver mining country, accounting for 22.7% (2019 figures) of global silver production. When Mexico was still a Spanish colony, its huge silver supply fuelled inflation, primarily in Spain and growth. Today, as silver is no longer needed for photography, silver is practically useless, but even in 1957, when the type was introduced, Mexico had more silver than it could sell. The reason why the coin has a very low silver content is that Mexico's silver was once again causing inflation, this time in Mexico.
The world changed starting in the mid-sixties in a slow motion-movement that took almost 20 years to play out. Starting with the Vietnam war, it led to high shortages on the balance of payments of the US (they still exist!) to a high silver price to the demise of silver coins and - via the oil crisis - to the dollar crisis and the Hunt brothers scandal: silver was out as a mint metal. Mexico was hard hit. This coin was one of the last, if not the very last circulating coins that contained silver in the world.
So much history, from Romans to the Hunt brothers on make-believe and silver coins.
Peter
