The other day my wife came home from her mom's house, where she did some cleaning, and came across a number of old Peso coins. Well, old is always relative when it comes to devalued currency, so instead I should say discontinued, as most of them don't go back much further than the 1970's. (Kinda like myself ... so am I getting old now?) Anyway, these coins give us a bit of an impression of the changes that the Mexican legal tender went through over the years. Quite interesting, actually.
Late 70's to Early 80's
Let me start out with a series of coins minted in the 1970's and early 80's, just before the massive inflation of the 1980's. This series was introduced in the early 60's, and so it must have been the coins the baby-boomer generation grew up with.
The coin on the bottom row left is a 5 Centavo piece, with the face of Josefa Ortiz, followed by the 20 Centavo with Francisco Madero. The 50 Centavo coin features the head of a Cuaihtémoc, and the sizable 1 Peso coin José Maria Morelos. The left coin in the top row is the 5 Peso piece bears Vicente Guerrero's face, followed by Miguel Hidalgo on the octagonal 10 Peso coin. The subsequent 20 Peso features a Mayan leader, warrior, or possibly ball player, and finally the 50 Peso coin is decorated with the moon goddess Coyolxāuhqui.
Sudden Loss of Value
If you notice, the $50 coin is the most recent of all, minted in 1984. But also the $20, and especially the $1 piece are from 1981. So accordingly, even in the early 80's one had at least the feeling of holding something of value (even if that peso coin was probably not worth very much). However, all this changed radically in only a few short years.
This brings me to the second set, minted between 1984 and 1988. Starting out with the 1 Peso coin on the bottom left, still featuring Morelos. It is considerably smaller than the one in the previous set, which interestingly is only three years older! On the other hand, this one Peso coin seems to be completely out of place compared to the rest of the series! My guess is that when these new coins came out, they actually discontinued the use of the $1, along with all the Centavos.
The $5 coin is already so small that it must have been already worthless when it came out. The tiny $10 with Hidalgo, and the $20 with Guadalupe Victoria aren't much better off in this regard. The first decent sized coin in this bunch is that of the 100 Peso, featuring Venustiano Carranza. The coin on the top left is a specially minted $200 piece, commemorating the 175 years of Mexican independence. It has the faces of four founding fathers, crammed so tightly that I couldn't identify them even under a magnifying glass. But I would guess they are probably Hidalgo, Morelos, Guerrero, and Allende.
The following 500 Peso coin bears the face of Francisco Madero, and is barely bigger than its contemporary 100 Peso piece. Next up is Sor Juana on the $1000 coin. This one already seems a bit more than just pesky pocket change you throw around, but actually, by the time of the monetary reform in 1993 and the introduction of the Nuevo Peso, three zeros were removed, so this ended up being worth just one Peso, whatever that meant in practice... Lastly, the $5000 coin is also a commemorative mint of the 50 years anniversary of the expropriation of the oil industry.
Interim Coins, and Old Coins, and Tail Sides
What a difference already! But wait, there is more: Among the two sets of coins I found a couple that just didn't quite fit either series. Obviously, when inflation started getting out of control, there were only a few coins re-minted at first, always smaller, symbolizing an increasingly lower value.
Here is a 20 Centavo piece from 1983, ironically, about the same size as the 20 Centavos from 1976 AND the 20 Peso piece from 1985! The image on it is one of the massive heads carved by the Olmec culture. The other coin is a $5 piece from 1980, featuring the head of Quetzalcoatl, as can be seen in Teotihuacan.
Take a look at these three $5 pieces, from 1976, 1980, and 1985 respectively! The change in size gives us an idea of how money lost its value from (presumably) something to virtually nothing in less than a decade. Oh yeah, by the way, there is no reason this can't happen again. And not only with some "third world money" (FYI, the Mexican Peso has been the most stable currency in Latin America), but also with currencies of international confidence, such as ¥€$.
These next three coins are a bit older, but considerably bigger than either of the previous sets. The one on the left is a 20 Centavo piece from 1965, featuring the pyramids of Teotihuacan. Next is a huge 50 Centavo piece bearing the face of Cuauhtémoc, minted in 1957. Finally, we have an enormous coin of 1 Peso, as always with Morelos, from 1959. It is interesting to note that this coin is just about as big as the 1976 $5 coin or the 1884 $50 in the first set, and the 1988 $5000 piece from the second set. However, in 1959 the $1 coin still included 4 grams of silver!
Also, if you were wondering what the tail sides of Mexican coins look like, they are all the same: The national symbol of the eagle on the nopal cactus with the snake in its beak, and the lettering of Estados Unidos Mexicanos. The only exception is the 1959 $1 coin, which also includes the year and the value on its tail. Now that you've seen one, you've seen them all.