1/4 Real Provisional coinage

Peru's provisional copper coinage of 1822 was authorized almost immediately after independence was declared, filling a desperate gap left by the collapse of Spanish colonial mint operations. Silver was being hoarded or melted, and small-denomination transactions had ground to a halt. The Lima mint turned to copper — a metal it had virtually no tradition of striking for circulation — producing a makeshift fractional coinage under conditions that were, by any measure, chaotic.

KM#135 is notorious for crude, off-center strikes and irregular planchets, a direct consequence of improvised production rather than careless workmanship.