1/4 Real - Fernando VII

Lima's quarter real occupied a peculiar position in colonial commerce: too small for most transactions, it functioned primarily as change in markets where fractional accounting mattered more than purchasing power. Fernando VII never set foot in the Americas, spending the period of this coin's entire production run first as Napoleon's prisoner at Valençay, then as an increasingly despotic constitutional antagonist back in Madrid. The Lima mint continued striking in his name even as royalist control of Peru itself collapsed around it.

Production continued through 1823 — two years after Peruvian independence had been declared.