Centennial of the Promulgation of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States of February 5, 1917

The 20 pesos coin commemorating the centennial of the promulgation of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States is a tribute to one of the country's founding documents. The Carta Magna (Magna Carta, meaning the supreme law of the land) was signed on February 5, 1917, and in 2017 the Banco de Mexico struck and issued this bimetallic piece to celebrate its hundred years in force.

This is a bimetallic coin with an aluminum-bronze ring and a cupronickel center, with an official weight of 15.945 grams and a diameter of 32 millimeters. Banxico authorized a mintage of 7,000,000 pieces, which makes it accessible but very representative of Mexican commemorative numismatics. It belongs to the same family as other issues worth checking out, such as the Commemorative of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Application of the DN-III-E Plan and the 50th Anniversary of the Application of the Marina Plan.

In official blister grade it has a reference price of 300 pesos, based on a purchase verified by the Pesoteca catalog in 2026. The value changes with the state of preservation: a circulated piece is worth less, while one in a sealed blister trades above a loose UNC.

This piece celebrates the hundred years of the Constitution that still governs us. The story begins in the Revolution: Venustiano Carranza, First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army, convened in 1916 a Constituent Congress that met in the Gran Teatro Iturbide (today the Teatro de la República) in Querétaro, from December 1, 1916 to January 31, 1917.

What was drafted there was no ordinary constitution. The constituent deputies enshrined the social demands of the Revolution in articles that traveled around the world: secular and free education, land distribution and the nation's ownership of the subsoil, and workers' rights. On February 5, 1917 Carranza promulgated the Magna Carta in that same theater.

That's why the coin entered circulation precisely on February 5, 2017, on the exact centennial, and on its reverse it pays tribute to Carranza and to constituents such as Pastor Rouaix, Francisco J. Múgica, and Heriberto Jara. One of the most sought-after bimetallic 20-peso coins for completing the series.

The three articles that changed the country

What made this Constitution unique was not reorganizing the government, but raising social rights to constitutional rank for the first time in the world. Three articles carried almost all the weight: Article 3, with secular and free education; Article 27, which declares that land and subsoil originally belong to the nation (from there come agrarian reform and control of oil); and Article 123, which established the 8-hour workday, the minimum wage, and the right to strike and to unionize. Article 123 was pushed by deputies like Heriberto Jara and was approved unanimously, with 163 votes. The most radical wing of the Constituent Congress, the one that gave it its strong social content, was people like Francisco J. Múgica, Jara himself, and Pastor Rouaix, chiefly responsible for putting together Article 27. The four figures on the reverse aren't decoration: they are the faces of that social content.

How to identify it and how rare it is

The first quick filter is the shape: this piece is round (circular), not dodecagonal like many other commemorative 20-peso coins. It measures 32.0 mm in diameter, weighs 15.945 g, and is bimetallic (aluminum-bronze ring, cupronickel core with 75% copper and 25% nickel), with an interrupted reeded edge. It has no year or metal variants: a single year, 2017, a single design. If you have a round 32 mm coin with Carranza and three more figures surrounding a book, this is it.

As for value, it's worth setting expectations. With 7,000,000 pieces struck it is not a scarce coin: it came out recently, it circulated, and there are a great many. You'll see newspaper stories shouting that it's "worth 36 thousand pesos" or even millions; that's clickbait. Its real market value runs between 100 and 300 pesos, and the range depends almost entirely on condition. A circulated piece is worth little above its 20-peso face value; an uncirculated one (UNC), with luster and no spots, especially in a Banxico blister, reaches the high end. The classic middleman trick is to sell a circulated one "as if it were from a blister" at UNC price: check the original luster and that it has no spots or oxidation before paying. If you want to build the full commemorative 20-peso series, this is one of the first you gather with almost no struggle; the hard ones are others.