Types of Spanish Coins

The Coins in the Images

The vast majority of Spanish coins that circulated in the US were from the American Spanish colonial countries. There were three main types of Spanish colonial silver coins (gold and copper coins were not used as vignettes on US obsolete notes): cob, pillar, and bust. Only the bust coinage is known to have been used on US obsolete notes.

• Cob coinage--crude coins made until the early 18th century.
• Pillar coinage--"milled" or machine made coinage minted from 1732 until 1772.
• Bust coinage--milled coinage from 1772 until independence, 1821-25.
• Homeland Spanish coinage--only one type appears on notes.

The Spanish colonial countries responsible for most of the coinage--and all of it that serves as depictions on US notes with the exception of the homeland Spain 20 reales coin--are Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala.  The origin of the coin is determined by the mintmark on the reverse of the coin.

Each country appointed assayers--usually a pair--whose responsibility it was to assure the purity of the coin metal and the accuracy of the coins' weight.  The assayers' initials appear on the coins near the mintmark.

While the minting date doesn't always appear on cobs, it is on all the later types.  However, since the obsolete note coin vignettes use the reverse, or non-date, side of the coin, the date is invisible.  The range of possible dates for the coins in the vignettes can be determined from the mintmark/assayer combination, since it is usually known when the assayers were active.

For the bust coinage, mintmarks, the associated country, assayers' marks, and the date range for coins bearing these marks are shown in the following table: 

Data are taken from Krause.