There's an interesting anecdote that goes along with the earliest days of the first Spanish colonial mint in Mexico.

But Spain would never, ever send enough, so they had to mint them themselves.

And yeah, you're right, the Spanish colonies were always begging, downright pleading with Spain for them to ship them coins for local use. It wouldn’t make much economic sense to take up time in mints such as Lima, Potosi, Mexico etc to mint small value coins, which of course is why the colonial mints generally produced the larger 8 and 4 reales for shipment back to Spain, or ingots of silver if the mints were working flat out.Īs far as I am aware, maravedis were shipped out as ballast on the ships sailing to the New World.Ĭlick to expand.They all minted them, not for shipment back to Spain, but for local use. Secondly, I may be wrong, but I cannot recall any maravedis being produced in the overseas Spanish mints- the ones for Santo Domingo were actually minted in Seville. (There are of course Iberian pre-Roman coins with bulls, but none in modern times). It is most certainly a lion which appears on many maravedis and whose dies were designed by somebody who could recognize a bull when he saw one, and draw one, but who probably had never seen a lion in the flesh. First, no Spanish coin of the period featured a bull. Number five is a maravedi, but too worn for ID purposes.Īnd finally, two points. Counterstamping to raise the nominal value of the coin could only be done with copper and billon coins as Spanish silver was the international money of the day and could not be treated in such a cavalier fashion. Its soldiers were paid in maravedis so taking in maravedis and restamping them to twice their previous face value was an effective but unpopular way of halving the cost of its armies and paying small debtors. Spain in this period was engaged in expensive and prolonged wars (the 30-Years War) and was practically bankrupt, in spite of Peruvian silver. Numbers four and six are four maravedis which were counterstamped to increase their values. The third coin is a two maravedis from Burgos, of pure copper, minted between 1602 – 1621 (reign of Felipe III) or Felipe IV from 1621 to 1626 when the design changed (no shield). Google “2 cuartos Felipe II” to see the real thing). (Ignore Numista where these are incorrectly labelled as 2 maravedis. This is clearly shown by the dotted inner circle on the obverse and reverse, which is never found on maravedis. The second coin is not a maravedi, but a 2 cuartos billon coin (i.e two quarters or half a real) of Felipe II, minted between 15. Within a very short time of its issue, however, all 1 and 2 maravedis were counterstamped to double their value. This coin is now one of the rarest Spanish coins, even those of gold and silver coins. From 1603 to 1659, there were six series of counterstamping the copper coinage in order to increase their value and thus raise revenue:ġ603: the 2 & 4 maravedis have their value tripledġ636: the pure copper maravedis (not the billon ones) also have their value tripledġ641-42: the 2, 4 and 8 maravedis are increased in value to 6,8 and 12ġ651-52: the 1 and 2 maravedis are quadrupled in valueġ654-53: the 4 maravedis are doubled to 8ġ658-59: as there were practically no 2 maravedis left in circulation, a new, tiny 2 maravedi was issued. The first coin is a 4 maravedis which has been officially counterstamped to raise its value to 8.

Old spanish gold coins