Costa Rican peso Costa Rican peso The peso was the currency of Costa Rica between 1850 and 1896. It was initially subdivided into 8 "reales" and circulated alongside the earlier currency, the real, until 1864, when Costa Rica decimalized and the peso was subdivided into 100 "centavos". The peso was replaced by the colón at par in 1896 In 1850, silver coins were issued in denominations of , ⅛ and ¼ peso. In 1864, silver coins were introduced in denominations of 25 centavos and 1 peso. These were followed the next year by cupro-nickel ¼ and 1 centavos and silver 5, 10 and
Cross of Gold speech caused by the Napoleonic Wars caused United States gold coins to be worth more as bullion than as money, and they vanished from circulation. Governmental response to this shortage was hampered by the fact that officials did not clearly understand what had happened. In 1830, Treasury Secretary Samuel D. Ingham proposed adjusting the ratio between gold and silver in US currency to 15.8:1, which had for some time been the ratio in Europe. It was not until 1834 that Congress acted, changing the gold/silver ratio to 16.002:1. This was close enough to the market value to make it uneconomic to