1 Peso Silver 1958

The 1958 silver peso is one of those pieces that many Mexican collectors keep with real affection because it marks the end of a tradition. It is struck in 0.720 silver, weighs 15.96 grams and measures 34.5 millimeters, with a reeded edge. The reverse carries the bust of Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon, an image that defined the Mexican peso through much of the twentieth century, and it came from the Casa de Moneda de Mexico (the Mexican Mint).

This type belongs to the family known as the "peso Morelos," which circulated from 1947 and remained in use, with adjustments to its silver content, well into the 1950s. The 1958 issue is part of the last emissions with a relatively high silver content before the peso continued to lose precious metal in later years. That is why it is a coin that combines historical value with intrinsic value: it still carries 0.720 fineness silver, something you would no longer see in the one peso denominations of the following decades.

For the collector, its appeal lies as much in preservation as in metal content. The examples that circulated tend to appear fairly worn on the relief of Morelos, so pieces with sharp detail in the hair and face command prices above the common ones. It is an accessible coin for starting a peso Morelos series by date, and it fits well in any collection that wants to tell the story of silver in Mexican circulating coinage of the twentieth century.

Circulating Mexican peso coins from the second half of the 20th century were struck in alloys that changed with the cost of metals and inflationary processes: .720 silver in the $1, $5, $10, $25 denominations during the 1940s-50s; cupronickel from the 1970s; aluminum bronze and stainless steel in the 1980s; pieces with historical figures (Hidalgo, Cuauhtemoc, Juarez, Madero) in the late 1980s just before the transition to Nuevos Pesos in 1992. 1958 corresponds to the period when this variant was in circulation.