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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 2536760, member: 66&quot;]OK first you need to know the denominations in use, the base units and their relationships</p><p><br /></p><p>British used Pounds made up of 240 pence to the pound</p><p>Coins were farthing (1/4 of a pence), half pence, six pence, shilling (12 pence), half crown (2 1/2 shillings or 18 pence), crown (5 shillings or 60 pence), sovereigns (1 pound or 20 shillings) and guineas (21 shillings)</p><p><br /></p><p>Spanish and spanish colonies used reales and what were called &quot;spanish dollars&quot; that were made up of 8 reales.</p><p>Coins were quarter reale, half reale, reale, the pistereen, 2 reales, 4 reales, and the 8 reales or dollar (dollar was a colloquial term not an official denomination).&nbsp; In gold they had the escudo which equaled two dollars, the doubloon which equaled 4 dollars , and the 8 escudo which was 16 dollars.&nbsp; The pistereen was 1/5th of a spanish dollar</p><p><br /></p><p>US didn&#039;t have there own coinage in 1760, they mainly used Spanish or British coins.&nbsp; If you see a reference to X number of dollars during this time period they meant that number of Spanish 8 reales coins.&nbsp; If they make reference to a colony and dollars then they are speaking of a colony money of account.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;The individual colonies did have their own moneys of account but no actual physical coinage.&nbsp; The relationship between the different colony currencies can be quite confusing.&nbsp; They all based their money on the spanish &quot;dollar&quot; and had it equal to a set number of shillings, but each colony valued the dollar as a different number of shillings.&nbsp; So a shilling of SC was not the same as a shilling of NY and neither one was the same thing as a British shilling.&nbsp; The only similarity was that for each of them the shilling was 12 pence, but that mean the pence was not the same in each location either.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now you need to have some way of relating the different values to each other.&nbsp; The best thing is to use the 8 reales.&nbsp; It could be treated and being worth the same amount everywhere.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>In Britain it was worth 4 shillings 9 pence.&nbsp; Good rule of thumb for quick conversions is to treat it as a crown of five shillings or 5 Spanish dollars to the Pound.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the US the 2 reales was called a quarter dollar, the 4 reales a half dollar.&nbsp; The 1 reale was a bit and the quarter reale was a half bit.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now here is where the conversions get difficult.&nbsp; We are very used to thinking in cents, with a quarter being 25 cents and a half dollar being fifty cent etc.&nbsp; But in 1760 there were no cents and people were used to thinking in pence.&nbsp; So that would make a quarter dollar equal to 15 pence and Spanish dollar was 60 pence if the merchant was using the British money of account&nbsp; (a pistereen was 12 pence.) but a different number of pence if they were using a colony money of accounting.&nbsp; For example in NY and PA the Spanish dollar was roughly 96&nbsp; pence (8 shillings/$) so a 2 reales or quarter dollar was 24 pence.&nbsp; In MA the dollar was 84 pence (7 shillings/$) so a quarter dollar was 21 pence.&nbsp; in the Carolinas it was 15 pence (5shillings/$), and in MD it was 18 pence for a quarter dollar (6 shilling/$)</p><p><br /></p><p>That should get you started.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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