Description
Spanish Empire, Captaincy General of Chile, Charles IV of the House of Bourbon-Anjou, King of Spain 1788-1808 AD, Silver Two Reales (6.31g, 28mm), 1799 So DA, Santiago mint, Chile. Obverse: Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust of King Charles IV facing to the right, date below, legend surrounds, “·CAROLUS· IIII· DEI· GRATIA·”. Reverse: Royal Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Spain, Pillars of Hercules type (1700-1868), legend terminating with the mintmark, denomination and assayer’s initials surrounds, “·HISPAN· ET IND· REX·”. KM-59. Fairly worn but a scarce mint, a nice type example, details Fair, reverse Fine.
The Latin legend spanning over both the obverse and reverse is the royal titulature of King Charles IV, reading unabridged as “Carolus Quartus, Deī grātiā, Hispāniae et Indiae rēx”, with an English translation of “Charles the fourth, by the Grace of God, King of Spain and the Indies”.
The Eight Reales, also known as the ‘piece of eight’ or the ‘Spanish dollar’, was a large silver coin struck by the Spanish Empire following the monetary reform of 1497 and was a keen rival to its other large silver contemporaries such as the Holy Roman Empire’s Reichsthaler Specie and later Conventionsthaler, the English Crown, the Dutch Daalder, the Scandinavian Daler, and Thaler of the Cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy. At the time of the ‘Pillar’ and ‘Bust’ types of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Eight Reales were struck to a fine silver weight of 24.809 grams and, after 1772, 24.443g. Uniformity in weight standard and milling characteristics, as well as its prolific circulation throughout the world through trade with the Spanish Empire, made the silver Eight Reales widely recognized as the first international currency. Due to this, it was one of the monetary denominations chosen by Philip Gidley King, the Governor of New South Wales, for the Australian Money Proclamation of 1800 – Australia’s first monetary system. In order to retain coinage within the Australian colonies, each ‘Proclamation coin’ was given a high face value – the Spanish Dollar was revalued to Five Shillings, the same as an English crown despite having less fine silver. Although not specifically mentioned on the Proclamation, all of the fractional coins are considered part of the wider series and therefore, in Colonial Australia, the silver two reales was given a theoretical face value of One Shilling Three Pence.
