Pieces of eight

There's something fascinating about relics from a bygone age - none more so than those associated with pirates and vagabonds.

Silver eight-real coins were worth one Spanish dollar, and were the source of the phrase “pieces of eight,” 

Cobs

The terms is applied to the first minted coins in the reign of Philip II of Spain, these coins were rather crudely constructed from the silver bars by hammering chunks of metal between dies, producing irregular shaped 'pieces' of the appropriate weight. These were mass produced in order to facilitate easy and quick transportation back to Spain from the Americas, where the metal could either be melted down for use in jewelry or  circulated as coinage. Many specimens  were clipped and pieces of silver removed, for various reasons, thereby disfiguring and devaluing the coin.

The first of these coins were minted in Lima, Peru in the mid 16th century. Many millions more emanated from the Bolivian mine of Potosi, which continued to churn them out for the best part of two hundred years. Over the years the quality of these 'shield type' design coins , which were handstruck, deteriorated, rendering the detail unclear.  Because there was no requirement to date coins, specifically at Potosi until 1617, dating of earlier coins is difficult, however there are ways for certain coins produced from the Potosi, Lima and La Plata mints.

The last of the cobs were struck at Potosi in 1773, by which time  the superior 'pillar dollar' had been introduced and widely adopted as trade currency. Reales from the mid-19th century ranged in value from 1/20th of a real (the media decima, minted in copper) to 100 reales (the gold doblon, commonly called the doubloon).which has been associated with pirates and  treasure since the late 1800's.

By the decade of the 1590's the flow of silver to Spain had reached 3 million kilos, the quantities of silver leaving South America was huge and whilst much of it completed the journey, a lot ended up in other places, we shall discuss this in a later article.

  An eight reales coin, Potosi, Bolivia,  1589-1598