Siping: The Forgotten Copper Money of Northern Luzon
Updated: Sep 7
CORDILLERA NUMISMATIC HISTORY
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Among the lesser-known chapters in the history of Philippine copper coins is the siping, a locally manufactured copper currency documented in the Cordillera and other parts of Northern Luzon. Historical accounts described these pieces as counterfeits because they imitated existing copper coins without official authority. Yet the same records show that they served an important practical purpose in places where small-denomination coins were difficult to obtain.
Another early account records a similar currency under the name sipen. The similarities between the two—including their geographic setting, purpose and recorded value—make the siping an intriguing but still incompletely understood part of Philippine numismatic history.
Philippine Copper Coins and Counterfeiting
Small-denomination copper had a long history in the Philippines. During the Spanish colonial period, the Cabildo of Manila produced copper pieces such as barrillas and condines, while the cuarto and half-cuarto or ochavo later became important fractional denominations.
For a broader discussion of Philippine copper coinage, see Spanish-Philippine Copper Coinage (1728–1835).
Counterfeiting was also a recurring problem. Records from 1734 document concerns over counterfeit barrillas and condines. Counterfeit cuartos later became widespread, and false copper coins remained a persistent monetary problem into the nineteenth century.
This broader history provides useful context for understanding the siping. Copper was essential for everyday transactions, but shortages of small change and the circulation of unofficial pieces repeatedly complicated the monetary system.
Siping and the Copper Industry of Northern Luzon
The history of siping was closely connected with a region already known for copper and metalworking.
Historian Jely A. Galang, in his study of nineteenth-century copper mining in Northern Luzon, describes an established indigenous copper economy in which Igorot communities mined and worked copper and traded partly processed ore with lowland communities in La Union and Ilocos.
Galang also records a later connection between Chinese workers and local metalworking. Following the withdrawal of the Cantabro-Filipina mining company in 1875, some Chinese workers remained in the area. Galang states that Chinese and Igorot workers engaged in smithing and in the manufacture of counterfeit siping.
This places the siping within a wider Northern Luzon tradition of copper mining, trade and metalworking rather than treating it simply as an isolated form of counterfeit coinage.
The Siping of Northern Luzon
One of the most detailed historical descriptions of the siping appears in the Census of the Philippine Islands: 1903.
The Census describes siping as locally manufactured imitations of Spanish copper coins. They were thinner than the genuine coins they copied, but their importance came from the scarcity of small change in the province and elsewhere in Northern Luzon.
They circulated at a recognized rate:
4 sipings = 5 centavos or 1¼ centavos per piece.
The Census indicates that their circulation extended across at least the western half of Northern Luzon and that local demand exceeded the available supply.
The same account provides valuable information about how the pieces were made. Spanish copper coins served as models for preparing molds in clay, while production required only relatively simple tools and a small charcoal-fired setup.
This method also suggests that collectors should not necessarily expect siping to have one standardized design. If existing copper coins were being copied, the appearance of individual pieces could vary according to the coin used as a model.
From Copper Kettles to Money
The Census records another unusual aspect of siping production.
Traditional hand-worked Igorot copper kettles were reportedly being converted into material for producing siping. This does not establish that every siping was made from a recycled kettle, but it provides evidence that existing locally worked copper could be repurposed into currency.
The account provides a remarkable connection between traditional Cordilleran copperworking and the local need for small-denomination money.
Jenks and the Sipen
Another important account comes from anthropologist Albert Ernest Jenks, who recorded a locally produced copper currency under a slightly different name: sipen.
Jenks associated its manufacture particularly with Suyak and Mankayan in Lepanto. He explained that centavos from Manila were not reaching Lepanto and Bontoc in sufficient quantities, leaving locally produced copper pieces to fill the need for small change.
His account also indicates that several types of copper coins circulating elsewhere in the Philippines were imitated. This further suggests that the sipen—and potentially the siping—may have represented a group of locally produced imitations rather than a single uniform coin type.
Most significantly, Jenks recorded their exchange rate as:
80 sipen = 1 peso
This corresponds exactly with the value recorded for siping in the Census:
80 sipen = ₱1 = 1¼ centavos each
4 sipings = 5 centavos = 1¼ centavos each
The identical exchange value, similar geographic setting, local manufacture and shared connection with a shortage of small change provide strong evidence that siping and sipen describe the same or closely related monetary phenomenon.
The sources examined here, however, do not explicitly establish that siping and sipen are linguistically equivalent forms of the same word. That relationship remains open to further study.
The Word Siping Today
The historical story becomes even more interesting because siping has not disappeared from local usage.
The word continues to be used as a term for money in some local languages and dialects of the Cordillera. Expressions such as Waday siping mo?—“Do you have money?”—preserve the term in everyday speech, even though its historical association with locally made copper money has largely been forgotten. This provides linguistic evidence that siping survives as a monetary term beyond the historical descriptions of the copper pieces.
What remains uncertain is the direction of the relationship. The evidence examined so far does not establish whether siping was already a general word for money when the copper pieces were being produced, or whether its broader monetary meaning developed through an association with the currency.
The continued use of the word is therefore an important linguistic connection, but it should not by itself be treated as proof of the historical origin of the term.
What Remains Unknown
The available records establish a surprisingly detailed picture of the siping. Locally manufactured copper pieces circulated in Northern Luzon, imitated existing copper coins, and helped provide fractional money where official small change was scarce. They circulated at an established exchange value and were connected with a region that already possessed a significant tradition of copper mining and metalworking.
Jenks' independent account of the sipen strengthens this history considerably, particularly because his recorded exchange rate exactly matches the value reported for siping.
Several questions, however, remain unresolved.
The precise linguistic relationship between siping and sipen has not been established. Neither can a single standard siping design currently be identified from the written evidence. The historical accounts instead indicate that different copper coins could have served as prototypes.
The chronology also deserves further study. Galang discusses siping in the context of nineteenth-century Northern Luzon, while the 1903 Census describes the particular industry it observed in terms suggesting a relatively recent period of production. These accounts cannot yet be confidently combined into an uninterrupted chronology without additional primary evidence.
And perhaps the most important question for numismatists remains unanswered:
Do identifiable examples of the historical siping survive today?
If several different copper coins served as models, surviving pieces may not conform to a single recognizable design. Some may potentially remain unidentified among collections as crude imitations or counterfeits of other copper coinage.
Until documented specimens can be securely connected with the historical record, the siping remains one of the more intriguing unresolved subjects in Philippine numismatics.
References & Sources:
Boncan, Celestina P. “The Copper Coinage of the Cabildo of Manila.” Philippine Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4 (1985), pp. 518–524.
Boncan, Celestina P. “Colonial Copper Coinage in the Tobacco Monopoly, 1769–1837.” Philippine Studies, Vol. 34, No. 4 (1986), pp. 518–527.
Galang, Jely A. “Chinese Laborers on a Mining Frontier: The Case of Copper Miners in Northern Luzon, 1856–98.” Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2021), pp. 3–31.
Jenks, Albert Ernest. The Bontoc Igorot. “Medium of Exchange,” p. 93.
United States Bureau of the Census. Census of the Philippine Islands: 1903, Vol. I. Washington, 1905, p. 84.
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