Philippines - U.S. colonial coinage

Following the Spanish-American War in 1898 the United States acquired the Philippines from Spain. Coinage was produced under the U.S. administration between 1903 and 1944, with some years being skipped. Coins were produced in San Francisco and later in Manila, as well as a few in Denver following reconquest during World War II. Some coins don't have mintmarks and I'm not sure where in the U.S. they were produced. Something interesting to me is the coins say "United States of America" on them.

For years I was trying to assemble a complete set by date, but I've given up on that in recent years and now I'm preparing to break up my sets and sell most of them, just keeping a few good examples from each denomination. But before I do, I wanted to share these. Here are the half centavos (only produced for two years) and 1 centavo. I'm missing two dates for the 1 centavo but otherwise it is complete, minus varieties. If you've seen this coin there's probably a 99% chance it was the 1944 S, which pops up all the time. Most of the others are surprisingly hard to find unless you're willing to pay for them. When I got most of these I was collecting on the cheap, so some aren't in the best shape.

Here's the first group.

 

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Second group:

 

Third group:

 

Last group:

 

Thanks for sharing. Many of these are over a hundred years old. If you do sell them I hope you don't end up regretting it.

 

Nice set. Here's my one example of these coins...

1944-S 1 Centavo:

 

Very nice collection of Philippines centavos and half centavos. The fact that you got them on the cheap tells me these coins all worked for a living. Old school coin collecting at its' best.

 

Designed by Melicio Figueroa and none other than Charles Barber. I have not expanded my Barber coin interests to the Philippines but maybe someday. I have a nice 1945-D 10 centavos from grandpa but no images of it. Enjoyed seeing your set, thanks.

 

Here's a previous thread with some interesting tidbits regarding these coins.

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/us-philippines-coins-foreign-or-not.399059/

 

To me it is what it is, US territory coins minted in the US for the territory where it is legal tender.









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I never knew this and would have never thought this. Thanks for sharing this.

 

@Hiddendragon has always impressed me with his attempts to collect by date. That is ambitious, difficult and frustrating. I prefer to collect by type, which also is ambitious, difficult and frustrating. Philippines was one of the type sets I was able to put together.
Very interesting and historical set. One that I would encourage anyone interested in US coins to collect.

 

A few of mine that I have photos of. I also have a McArthur Peso and a few others, but can't find the pictures.

Z

 

Wow! That's dedication to presentation!

 

So Melicio Figueroa (a Filipino, correct?) designed it, but Barber modeled the plaster? How did that work? Do you know?

 

For the 5 centavos I find that I have a lot more gaps in the collection and many of the ones I do have are in rough shape. It seems like something about the composition of this coin didn't survive well in the environment of the Philippines. Here are a few of my better ones.

 

Yes, Figueroa was a Filipino. He was trained as an engraver in Spain, and was appointed engraver at the colonial mint in Manila in 1893. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melecio_Figueroa

I have no idea how the work on the peso coinage was divided. BCCS (http://barbercoins.org/CharlesBarber.shtml) says that Barber "assisted Filipino Melicio Figueroa with the designs for Philippines coinage beginning 1903." The wiki article says of Figueroa "In 1903, he joined a competition for the Philippine peso coinage system in 1903 and his design was selected as the winner." Nothing I've found says whether both sides were designed by Figueroa. I could speculate that the shield side was designed by Barber, with nothing to back that up other than that it has his "look." I would guess that they collaborated on the final master designs. Perhaps there are more details in the Barber Papers, a copy of which is at the ANA and is supposedly 3 inches thick.

It makes me curious about the 1937-1945 coins with the new coat of arms side. Numista still credits Figueroa and Barber, but both of them were long dead.

 

There is an entire file at the National Archives concerning contemporary Philippine coinage that is essentially untouched, too. Numista nor Krause can get everything right about all the world coins out there. The scale of their project is way too big for anyone to expect accuracy, I have had to learn. It will take researchers who are willing to shell out the hundreds of $$$ to get photocopying of these documents (Barber Papers, docs at the Archives...).

Information on world coins necessarily all has to be dissected piece by piece and written up. That's what I did for South Korean coins, and I'm thinking about doing the same for post-1945 Philippines. Not sure, though.

 

Here are my 10 centavos. I'm going to end up keeping more dates than I planned to because I'm finding it hard to part with some of the nicer ones and better dates. Many of these have relatively low mintages and I'm betting the prices have gone up a lot since I got them. I have most of the series but not all. There exists a 1904 with a mintage of only 11,000 that I don't have for sure.

 

Second page.

 

Last of the 10 centavos.