Flora and Fauna Series
The Flora and Fauna Series was a series of Philippine peso coins minted from 1983 to 1994, in denominations from 1 sentimo to ₱2. The series used the Optima typeface as their main text. The sizes of the coins were reduced in 1991, and the ₱5 coins were reintroduced in 1991. Production of 50-sentimo and ₱2 coins ceased in 1995.
History
In 1983, eight years after the introduction of the Ang Bagong Lipunan Series, a new series named the Flora and Fauna Series was introduced, in which the coins, in addition to featuring various Philippine national heroes as before, also began featuring plant and animal life forms native to the Philippines. The 50-sentimo and 2-piso denominations were reintroduced, the latter of which had not been struck as a coin since the Spanish had struck it in gold. The 5-piso denomination was stopped, but production resumed in the final four years of the Flora and Fauna Series, which featured reduced sizes for all denominations.The Flora and Fauna series had reported errors on two coins, in 1983. The text on the 10-sentimo coin for the scientific name of the Philippine goby was minted as "Pandaka pygmea" instead of "Pandaka pygmaea", and the 50-sentimo coin showed the misspelled version of the scientific name of the Philippine eagle as "Pithecobhaga jefferyi" instead of "Pithecophaga jefferyi".
In 1985, some of the 1-peso and 25-sentimo coins had a double strike error. The year 1987 for 25-sentimo and 1-piso coin are the ones to be considered as one of the lowest mintage years in selected denominations of the series, with the mintage of lower than 2 million.
In April 1, 1991, the Improved Flora and Fauna Series was introduced. The denominations from 25 sentimo up to 2 peso were smaller, and the 5-peso coin was reintroduced. Only the 2 peso Jose Laurel centennial coin was minted using the original 1983 larger size and copper-nickel composition on March 19, 1991 one month before the said improved series was introduced on April of the said year, minted 1,000 of them with a total of 2,000 pesos.
The size of the 25- and 50-sentimo coins of the Improved Flora and Fauna Series were same as the size of the twenty-five-satang and fifty-satang coins of Thailand, which the 50-sentimo and 50-satang coins both have reeded edges, while the 2-peso had the same size as its successor BSP Series 1-peso coin.