1 Escudo - Carlos IV

Carlos IV inherited the Spanish throne in 1788 and almost immediately found his colonial mints under pressure — the wars with Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France drained the crown's finances and accelerated gold extraction from Peruvian operations. Lima was the most productive gold mint in Spanish South America during this period, and the one-escudo denomination served primarily as a counting unit in larger commercial transactions rather than everyday exchange. Most examples saw hard use in merchant hands.

The KM#89 type spans sixteen years of production across multiple assayers, with the assayer initial appearing on the reverse acting as the primary means of dating individual strikes more precisely than the visible year alone.