1 Dollar - Elizabeth II 4th Portrait - Spanish Pillar Dollar

The Spanish pillar dollar — the eight-reales coin minted at colonial mints in Mexico City, Potosí, and Lima — was legal tender in Australia well into the nineteenth century, stamped and restamped by successive colonial administrations desperate for circulating specie. New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and the Port Phillip district each grappled with chronic coin shortages, and Spanish-American silver filled the gap for decades before a domestic minting infrastructure existed. The RAM's antiqued finish here is doing real commemorative work, gesturing at the worn, heavily handled condition in which most original pillar dollars actually survived colonial Australian pockets.