2 Reales - Felipe V

The 1732 date marks a turning point in New World coinage: that year, the Mexico City mint introduced the "milled" or "macuquina nueva" coinage under royal decree, replacing the cob (macuquina) silver that had been the standard since the sixteenth century. Felipe V had grown frustrated with the chronic underweighting and clipping fraud endemic to cob coinage, and the shift to mechanically struck, uniformly round planchets was partly a fiscal enforcement measure. Assayer marks during this transitional window can vary, and early examples sometimes show adjustment marks from planchet filing to meet weight tolerances.