Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="robinjojo, post: 24808962, member: 110226"]The Spanish and Portuguese colonizing South America, Central America, the Caribbean and areas of North America would need to bring coins with them during the early days of exploration and conquest, since the New World mints of Potosi, Bolivia (established in 1573), Mexico (established May 11, 1535), Santo Domingo (1542 to 1552) and Lima (established August 21, 1565) did not exist prior to those dates/years. I know that Spain produced very limit quantities of silver coinage for use in the colonies.  Also, there's evidence that a limited number of 8 reales were produced by making cast molds of Spanish Charles and Johanna coins.  But for copper coinage, the coinage of everyday use, it makes sense that these coins would be introduced, including old Roman 4th century bronze coins, until local minting was able to fulfil that need. Even then, with the focus on minting gold and silver coins to help the Spanish Crown finance ongoing wars and pay the loans provided European banking houses , copper coinage initially was sparse.  For example, the copper 2 maravedis coins produced by the Mexico City mint between1542 and 1551 list in Kruase for $500 in Good and $2,500 in VF - not cheap coins for sure and those prices are most certainly outdated.[/QUOTE]