1/8 Real 'Octavo'

Durango's copper fractional coinage of the 1820s emerged from a practical crisis: silver was being hoarded or exported almost as fast as the newly independent Mexican states could mint it, leaving daily commerce without a functional small-denomination medium. Individual states were authorized to strike copper to fill the gap, and Durango — isolated by geography and ongoing insurgent activity in the Sierra Madre — operated with considerable autonomy in its monetary decisions.

These octavos circulated hard in a regional economy where they were often the only coin a laborer would handle in a week.