Which mint city for 8 Reales (Spanish Milled Dollar) used in American colonies?

It seems there are a number of mints that produced 8 Reales / Spanish milled dollars, which makes sense, given Spain's economic position at the time. However, I'm wondering if there are specific mint cities that circulated to and in the American colonies (at and around the time of the American Revolutionary War). Is it limited to Spain, or were coins in Mexico and South America also used in the colonies (or any and all)? I think this would have a lot to do with where established trade routes were at the time.

Also, I acknowledge that these 8 Reales coins were divided up into eighths (hence the term, "pieces of eight") due to limits on coinage in the colonies and ease of commerce, so perhaps whole dollars weren't used but it's still the same mint city. Thanks in advance.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I think that Mexico city was used the most in America at that time.

 

I agree that the Potosi mine was the largest and minted more coins , but I see more Mexico City reales than any other . Maybe more coins from Potosi were shipped back to Spain and more Mexico City coins came to the US . Doug do you see a lot more Potosi minted coins as I don't .

 

The majority of metal detected coins in the eastern US seem to be from the Mexico city mint. In fact I just spent some time looking for them on a metal detecting forum, and every coin I saw that had a visible mint mark was from Mexico City. I have a 1784 half reale and a 1793 two reale from my area and both are Mexico City.

 

I agree, I am a member of a couple metal detecting forums and almost all Spanish silvers found are from mexico.

 

I have read that Spain tried very hard to keep coins minted in Spain out of the colonies and the rest of the world. Colonial-minted coins were used in trade and in the colonies themselves.

Rob

 

Even the designs were different , the obverse was similar but the reverse didn't have the pillars of Hercules so that makes sense .

 

By about the time of Carlos IIII the reales minted in Spain had a lower silver content than those minted in the colonies. I don't recall the purity, but can tell you from looking at some in my collection that the color of the metal is more dull and greyish. Apparently, when Spanish coins were used in commerce they were exchanged at a discounted value.

 

ok so the most common Spanish Milled dollar is the one minted in Mexico City, although there may have been some from other cities' dollars circulating during the American Revolution (1775-1783).. is what I'm hearing.

I'm interpreting the Wiki entry below to mean that Spanish origin refers to Spanish coins, regardless of mint city, rather than mint cities in Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency

"The coins in circulation in the colonies were most often of Spanish and Portuguese origin.[2] The prevalence of the Spanish dollar in the colonies led to the money of the United States being denominated in dollars rather than pounds.[2]"

 

iPen,
I would agree with your first asertion and wikipedia interpretation.

 

Does anyone know if the Potosi mint could even coin all the silver coming from the Cerro Rico Mountains and if some was shipped to the Mexico City mint to be minted ? It also makes sense that since Mexico was closer than Bolivia more coins from Mexico would reach the US especially when you realise most of the Southwest and California were once Mexican , so cross border flow would only be quite natural .

 

Here's a great link which may answer your questions regarding Spanish colonial and Spanish coinage use in north america in the late 1700's. http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Sp-Silver.intro.html
Hope this helps

 

Excellent link . Correct me if I'm wrong but it seemed that the Mexico City coins were milled dollars while the Potosi coins were cobs , to me this would account for the disparity in favor of the Mexico City reales to the Potosi minted cobs .

 

Per the article, didn't the last series of cobs stop in 1773? So, during the American Revolution years and afterwards, there should be standardized milled coins at all mint cities. Though, I'm unsure of how long that negative reputation stuck around - perhaps the size/weight disparity issues were replaced by colonists' skepticism of lesser silver purity (this is just a speculative possibility).... All in all, I wouldn't think it would stick around that long since milled coins had an edge inscription and all mint coins were more or less homogeneous in appearance post-1773, aka confidence restored/increased in those former cob mint cities.

Perhaps the favor of Mexico City Milled Dollars has more to do with transportation costs. It must have been magnitudes more expensive to transport tons and tons of coins from mints further away from Mexico City during the pre-rail years. Or maybe the other mints were ordered to ship silver back to Spain. But I'm no historian, so don't take my word for it.

 

My bad , I should have read it twice as there is a lot of good info there . I agree with your thesis about the cost of shipping , but like I said in an earlier post , most of the US Southwest was at one time Mexico , that and cross border commerce and travel might have been the reason why we find more Mexico City reales in the US , that is if we are indeed right in assuming there were more Mexican made reales in the Colonies .

 

Something that should be taken into consideration is the Manila trade that Spain had at that point in time. A larger percentage of coins minted in Potosi and Lima may have been traveling to Asian countries instead of the U.S., which would account for more Mexico City minted coinage ending up in north america.

 

Looking at US merchant countermarks on reales, they are mostly on Mexico City minted coins.

 

Doug, this has been debated in scholarly articles for years, and there is no agreement as to the origin of the dollar sign.

Last I read the most accepted belief was that it was a modification of the abbreviation Ps used to denote Pesos -- When a P is super-imposed on an S it comes out looking awfully similar to a dollar sign. The Potosi mint mark is also basically discernable as a P over an S, but I believe most academic/scholarly work now supports that it is a modification of the "PeSo" abbreviation, not the PotoSi mint mark.

Your post makes it sound as if the Potosi mint mark hypothesis is well accepted fact -- which it is NOT, and I think it's misleading to suggest that you are the end-all and know-all on the subject. Though it didn't surprise me in the least bit.

 

Interesting - although the Peso theory is the popular one, I saw in a documentary somewhere that the dollar sign originated from the back of the 8 Reales - the left column with the "S" shaped drape with the word PLUS makes it look like $.

Before that, I heard a different theory that the U and S letters overlapping each other make a dollar sign with two vertical lines through the S.