1/2 Real - Carlos IV Numeral IV - Carlos III portrait

Carlos IV ascended the Spanish throne in December 1788, but the Lima mint continued striking coins with the portrait of his father, Carlos III, well into 1791 — a lag caused by the time required to cut new dies and ship approved designs across the Atlantic. This transitional issue carries the IV numeral acknowledging the new king while retaining the old king's effigy, a bureaucratic overlap that produced one of the more historically legible anomalies in the colonial series. The assayer marks on these pieces can help narrow the striking year within the 1789–1791 window.