1/4 Real - Charles IV

The quarto real — Spain's smallest silver denomination — was struck at Potosí specifically to facilitate small transactions in the Andean market economy, where indigenous vendors and laborers needed fractional coinage that larger silver could not practically serve. Potosí's output during Charles IV's reign was complicated by the political upheaval following the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808, which severed colonial mints from direct royal oversight and compressed the final years of this type into an administratively chaotic period.

KM#82 pieces from 1808–1809 are notably scarcer than earlier dates in the run.