Zacatecas began striking emergency coinage in 1810 after insurgent forces under Hidalgo disrupted the normal flow of silver from mine to mint. The royalist issues produced there between 1813 and 1819 were crude by metropolitan standards — hand-struck on irregular planchets with improvised tools — because the mint was operating under wartime conditions with interrupted supply chains and a reduced workforce. Fernando VII never saw these coins; he was still imprisoned at Valençay when the earliest dates were struck.
The KM#73.1 designation covers the assayer-initial varieties, which differ enough in execution that individual examples can vary dramatically in centering and surface quality even within a single year.
Zacatecas began striking emergency coinage in 1810 after insurgent forces under Hidalgo disrupted the normal flow of silver from mine to mint. The royalist issues produced there between 1813 and 1819 were crude by metropolitan standards — hand-struck on irregular planchets with improvised tools — because the mint was operating under wartime conditions with interrupted supply chains and a reduced workforce. Fernando VII never saw these coins; he was still imprisoned at Valençay when the earliest dates were struck.
The KM#73.1 designation covers the assayer-initial varieties, which differ enough in execution that individual examples can vary dramatically in centering and surface quality even within a single year.