2 Reales - Carlos IV

Carlos IV's accession in 1788 forced a wholesale re-engraving of dies across Spain's American mints, replacing his father Charles III's portrait and royal cipher throughout the colonial system. Bogotá was among the slower mints to transition, and the earliest strikes of this type show workmanship inconsistencies attributable to locally-trained engravers working without direct supervision from Madrid.

The Nueva Granada viceroyalty was in political ferment through this window — the Comunero Rebellion of 1781 still fresh enough that colonial administrators kept close watch on public sentiment. These reales circulated alongside contraband and clipped coinage in a regional economy that the Crown could never fully regularize.