MEXICO, 20 centavos, 1901 CnQ

Description

Even at the turn of the 20th century there was so much silver in Mexico that it made sense to the government to operate branch mints to support the local circulation of the coins that carried the economy.

Because of all of the silver and gold the Spanish colonialists found in Latin America Spain was able to prosecute the wars of the Counter-reformation. They built nice buildings for themselves but otherwise neglected local development. Mexico in particular was rich in resources and people, and was an economic power in the world. By that I mean that for about 300 years world trade was done mostly in what they called, back then, “Spanish dollars.” The vast majority of those were Mexican.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.