In 1903 Congress gave the Philippine Islands a coinage of their own. The act of March 2, 1903 set the peso at half a United States dollar and provided silver coins of ten, twenty and fifty centavos beside it, and the twenty centavos was a fifth of a peso. The Filipino engraver Melecio Figueroa designed the coins, and the first twenty centavos were struck at Philadelphia and San Francisco in 1903. Philadelphia also struck proofs for collectors' sets every year from 1903 to 1908.
The first standard did not last. When silver became dearer, an act of June 23, 1906 let the Philippine government reduce the weight and fineness of its silver coins, and from 1907 the twenty centavos was made smaller: 4 grams of 75 percent silver instead of 5.385 grams of 90 percent. San Francisco struck it every year from 1907 to 1919.
In 1920 the Manila Mint opened, in the old Intendencia building where the Spanish mint had worked, and it struck twenty centavos in 1920 and 1921. When the coin was needed again in 1928, Manila had no reverse dies for it and used a five-centavo reverse instead, producing the 1928 mule. After the Commonwealth of the Philippines was founded in 1935, the reverse changed in 1937 to the Commonwealth arms, and Manila struck the new type until 1941, when the Japanese invasion stopped the mint. In May 1942 the government dumped millions of pesos in silver coins into Caballo Bay off Corregidor rather than let them be captured; much of it was recovered after the war. The last twenty centavos were struck at Denver in 1944 and 1945 for the liberation of the islands.
