1 Maravedi - Charles II Madrid, hammered

Charles II's copper coinage of this period was struck under conditions of chronic monetary disorder. The Spanish crown had debased and restamped its vellón coinage repeatedly through the mid-seventeenth century, triggering cycles of hoarding and premium pricing on silver that crippled everyday commerce. The pragmatic of 1680 — the year of this piece — was a drastic deflationary decree that halved the official value of circulating copper, an attempt to finally arrest the spiral.

The Madrid mint's hammered production was already anachronistic by 1680, with milled coinage having been introduced decades earlier at Segovia. These late hammered maravedís are notably crude by comparison.