The Spanish began striking silver coins in the New World in the 1530’s. The first major mint was at Mexico City, and initially only denominations of one to four reales were produced. Not until about 1573 did Mexico City strike its first regular issue of eight reales. The obverse design features a crowned Spanish royals arms; the attractive reverse displays a large tressured cross with castles and lions in the quarter sections.

About five years before the Mexico City mint, the mint at Lima, Peru claimed the honor of stroking the first Spanish eight reales of the New World. The Lima designs featured a crowned shield of castles and lions on the obverse, and two pillars rising from the waves on the reverse. Lima’s intermittent issues soon reverted to a design close to Mexico. For the first two centuries of Spanish coinage in the New World, the coinage was struck as macuquinas or cobs. Cobs are coins hand-struck on irregular planchets. Not until the second reign of Philip V did the Spanish crown order the replacement of cobs by milled coinage. The presses required to strike milled coinage were first send to Mexico City and the new coinage began in 1732.

 The first series of Spanish milled coins produced in the New World were known as columnarios or pillars. The name refers to the attractive obverse design which features two crowned globes flanked by crowned pillars. The globes represent the Old and New World, now united under Spanish rule, as the legend above proclaims: Ultraque Unum. The reverse design features a large Bourbon coat of arm, also crowned. The reverse legend gives the monarch’s name and reminds us that he is “by grace of God King of the Spain and the Indies.”

 Pillars were produced for 40 years. The major mints were at Mexico City, Potosi, and Lima. But smaller Pillar coinages were also issued at Santiago, Santa Fe de Bogota and Guatemala. In the late 1760’s the new Spanish monarch, Carlos III, decided that his portrait should grace his New World coinage. Beginning in 1772, and lasting until the Spanish colonies won their independence about 40 years later, Spanish New World mints issued the so-called Bust style of coinage, featuring a large, left-facing portrait of the monarch on the obverse, and a crowned Spanish arms, flanked by pillars, on the reverse. The portraits of three Spanish monarchs, Carlos III, Carlos IV, and Ferdinand VII, appear on the Bust coinage.  The wars of independence in Spain’s New World colonies brought Spanish Colonial coinage to an end by the early 1820’s.  Different mint fell to the revolutionaries at different times. For a while royal and provisional coinage competed in Mexico and South America. By 1822 the struggle was over in Mexico with The Mexican Empire of Iturbide striking its own portrait coinage in eight reales and other denominations. The independent new “Bolivar” Republics of South American followed suit shortly thereafter.