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By far the leading specie coin circulating in America was the Spanish silver dollar, defined as consisting of 387 grains of pure silver. The dollar was divided into "pieces of eight," or "bits," each consisting of one-eighth of a dollar. Spanish dollars came into the North American colonies through lucrative trade with the West Indies.
The silver 8-real coin was known as the Spanish dollar (as the coin was minted to the specifications of the thaler of the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg monarchy), peso, duro or the famous piece of eight. Spanish dollars minted between 1732 and 1773 are also often referred to as columnarios. The portrait variety from 1772 and later are ...
The first distinctive coins minted for Spanish America were copper 4-maravedí pieces authorized for Santo Domingo by Ferdinand on December 20, 1505 (later confirmed by his daughter, Johanna, on May 10, 1531). These coins were minted in Spain (at Burgos and Seville) and shipped to Santo Domingo , and subsequently also to Mexico and Panama. The ...
The 8 reales coin is the predecessor to the American dollar. Before the United States Mint was in production, columnarios circulated, along with other coinage, in the US colonies, as legal tender until the middle of the 19th century. Prior to the columnario, Spanish coins were hammer struck. These rather crude looking coins were called cobs ...
The numismatic history of the United States began with Colonial coins such as the pine tree shilling and paper money; most notably the foreign but widely accepted Spanish piece of eight, [1] ultimately descended from the Joachimsthaler and the direct ancestor of the U.S. Dollar. [1] The Spanish Piece of Eight, used widely as currency in ...
The coins in circulation during the colonial era were, most often, of Spanish and Portuguese origin. [3] For most of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish dollar was one of the few widely accepted denominations by the people, which resulted in it serving as the colonists' interim currency.
The Spanish dollar was a Spanish coin, the real de a ocho and later peso, worth eight reals (hence the nickname "pieces of eight"), which was widely circulated during the 18th century. By the American Revolution in 1775, Spanish dollars backed paper money authorised by the individual colonies and the Continental Congress. [7]
This coin was known to English colonists in North America as a piece of eight, then later on as a Spanish dollar, Spanish milled dollar, and finally as a Mexican dollar. In French, it was called a piastre and in Portuguese, a pataca or patacão. The Spanish names at various times and in various places were real de a ocho, patacón, duro, or fuerte.