1 Escudo - Felipe III milled

Felipe III inherited the Spanish throne in 1598 along with its chronic fiscal crises, and the milled escudo series was part of a broader effort to produce more consistent coinage than the cob ("macuquina") method that dominated colonial mints. Milled gold from this reign is scarce precisely because hand-struck cobs remained the dominant production method — machinery was expensive, slow, and politically resisted by mint workers whose piece-rate income depended on the old system.

The 1607–1608 dating bracket suggests assayer-transition attribution rather than a confirmed single-year strike.