Spanish colonial coins

Two metals, one system

Spanish colonial money came in silver and gold. The silver unit was the real, and the coins ran in a doubling ladder from a half real up to the 8 reales, the peso the world knew as the Spanish dollar and the piece of eight. The gold unit was the escudo, running from 1 up to 8 escudos, and the word doubloon comes from the 2 escudos piece. One escudo of gold was worth about 16 reales of silver. The full ladder, with values, is laid out on our reales and escudos reference.

Cobs and milled coins

The look of a coin tells you how it was made. From about 1572 to 1773, most colonial silver was struck as cobs: a blank was cut from a cast silver bar, hammered between hand dies, and clipped to the correct weight, which left a thick, irregular coin. From 1732 the mints began turning out milled coins on machines, round and even, including the famous columnario or pillar dollar. A rough lump with a shield is a cob; a neat circle with two pillars is milled. Our page on cob coins covers the older method in full.

Where they were struck

Coins were minted across the Spanish Americas, and the mint mark on each one names its home. Mexico City was the busiest. Potosi, high in the Andes, turned silver from the Cerro Rico into millions of coins and marked them with a monogram that looks like a dollar sign. Lima, Santo Domingo, Bogota, and Cartagena each left their own marks. Reading that mark is the first move in putting a name to a coin, which we walk through on how to identify a Spanish colonial coin.

Why they wash up in Florida

Treasure fleets carried this silver and gold from the Americas back to Spain, and the route ran up the Florida coast. When a fleet sank, its coins went to the seabed, and some still come ashore. The wreck of the 1715 Fleet gave Florida its Treasure Coast, and Mel Fisher's discovery of the Atocha off the Keys is one of the richest salvage stories ever told. Read about the 1715 Treasure Fleet and shipwreck coins to see how the sea becomes part of a coin's value.