4 Escudos Pattern, Copper

In 1869, Mexico was only two years clear of Maximilian's execution and the restored republic was actively rationalizing its coinage system. This copper piece is a pattern — a proposed denomination that never entered circulation — struck at the Casa de Moneda during a period when the mint was fielding multiple competing proposals for decimal reform. The 4 escudos unit itself was an anachronism by this point; the escudo had been formally displaced by the peso system years earlier, making the denomination choice here either a transitional shorthand or a clerical convention among mint officials.

Pattern copper strikings from this mint in the 1860s–70s are poorly documented in contemporary mint records, which survived the period incompletely.