The Money Museum is a free-admission museum in Manila Philippines! It chronicles the history of the Philippine money.
The development of monetary systems over the centuries paved the way for the complex network of national and international trade, investment and credit which runs our modern world. One of the primary functions of all governments is to protect national treasure and regulate currency in the domestic and world economies. The evolution of simple barter, one item exchanged for another, to the highly symbolic and abstract monetary system in use today, is one of the greatest achievements of the human intellect.
For the Philippines, money has played a vital role in the development of the nation. Based on archaeological evidence and the earliest records barter goods such as gold, rice, shells, beads, wax and other commodities formed the basis of inter-island trade and interaction with the outside world. The desire for gold and profitable exchange brought traders from around the world and lured Filipinos to travel across the seas. The Chinese brought weights and measures and some coins as early as the 9th century. The Spanish brought silver from America and set up the first monetary system and standardized coinage. The Spanish galleons imparted Mexican silver and coins from 1565 to 1815, placing Manila at the center of one of the longest and most successful international bullion exchanges the world has ever known. The first Filipino banknotes appeared in 1852 and a government mint opened in 1861.
At the end of the Philippine-American War in 1901, the Americans took over a chaotic monetary system which had been poorly administered by the Spanish and disrupted by the years of warfare. Mexican pesos, Spanish-Philippine pesos and American silver dollars were all in circulation and the value of silver was fluctuating wildly due to the Boxer Rebellion in China. When the price of silver went up, millions of pesos were smuggled out of the country and melted down, leaving the Philippines with a severe coinage crisis.
When the United States Congress passed the Philippine Coinage Act in 1903, silver content was reduced, the peso was tied to the American gold standard and officially pegged at two pesos to the dollar. The noted Filipino engraver, Melecio Figueroa, was commissioned to design new coins with beautiful allegorical figures posed beside Mt. Mayon on the face and an American eagle and shield on the reverse. The legends read FILIPINAS on one side and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on the other.
In 1935, with inauguration of the Philippine Commonwealth, the American eagle and shield were replaced with the Commonwealth coat-of-arms. The first American era coins were minted in San Francisco and Philadelphia and in 1920, a new mint was established in the Intendencia Building in Manila.
Banknotes continued to be printed by the El Banco Espanol Filipino until 1908 when a new design was printed in America. In 1912, El Banco Espanol Filipino changed its name to Bank of the Philippine Islands and the texts of the bills were changed to English. A wide variety of designs were used over the ensuing years depicting both Filipino and American national heroes. Backed by the officially set American gold standard, and later, silver standard, the Philippine peso stabilized and the chaotic mix of foreign silver coinage was driven out of circulation. The new designs and streamlined monetary system tied the Philippines closely to the United gates both politically and economically.
Disaster struck in December 1941 with the Japanese invasion in World War II, Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon, General Douglas MacArthur and the national gold reserves were evacuated by submarine from Corregidor Island in early 1942. The paper money from the Treasury was burned and 16 million silver peso coins were dumped into Manila Bay to prevent their capture by the Japanese. The Japanese printed new paper money but this was not widely accepted. The country suffered from high inflation. They minted no new coins during their more than three years of occupation. In the hills, resistance fighters issued crude guerilla currency prized by Philippine collectors today. The end of the war in 1945 brought the war-ravaged islands a new series of American made notes with the slogan “VICTORY” emblazoned across7 the, reverse. Philippine independence came the following year and the nation was finally free to issue its own national currency.
Money Museum Hours
Monday to Friday – 9 AM to 5 PM
Address
The museum is inside the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Main Complex.
Address: Ocampo St, Malate, Manila, 1004 Metro Manila, Philippines
Link to Google Map
Full credit: Money Museum
