10 Bits

The "bits" denomination was a colonial accounting fiction made physical — Spanish silver reales circulating in the French Caribbean were counterstamped and revalued to keep specie from draining out of the islands toward more favorable exchange rates elsewhere. Martinique's crowned RF counterstamp on Spanish colonial 8 reales created these pieces during a brief window when French administrators attempted to regulate a coinage supply they did not themselves produce.

The experiment was short-lived. Metropolitan France reasserted control over Caribbean monetary policy by the mid-1770s, rendering this counterstamp series officially obsolete within years of introduction.