5 Cents - George V (with DEI GRATIA)

The 1920 Canadian five-cent coin belongs to a transitional period for the nation's currency. Struck during the reign of King George V, this piece features the effigy of the monarch on the obverse and a simple maple leaf wreath surrounding the denomination on the reverse. It represents the final era of the small, silver five-cent piece before Canada shifted to the larger, nickel-composed coins in 1922, marking a practical evolution in how the public interacted with base-metal coinage.

The coin's design follows the traditional numismatic standards of the British Empire at the time, featuring Sir E.B. MacKennal’s portrait of George V. The inclusion of the 'DEI GRATIA'—meaning by the grace of God—abbreviation on the obverse was a standard practice that connected the Canadian currency to the British imperial identity. While these coins were mass-produced for daily commerce and did not have an individual designer focus in the modern sense, they were highly functional tokens of colonial governance that have since become staples for collectors interested in the shift toward Canadian domestic identity.