2 Escudos - Carlos IV

Carlos IV ascended the Spanish throne in 1788 as his father Charles III's reforms were still reshaping colonial minting. The Santa Fe de Bogotá mint had been producing gold escudos for the Crown since 1622, and by the 1790s it was one of Spain's most productive New World sources of gold coinage — drawing directly on the placer deposits of the Cauca and Magdalena river systems.

Production of this type ran through 1806, just a year before the transatlantic trade disruptions of the Napoleonic Wars began throttling colonial remittances to Spain. Assayer initials on the obverse identify individual accountability for fineness — a system introduced after repeated fraud scandals at New World mints in the preceding century.