4 Reales

The 4 reales occupied an awkward position in Mexican commerce almost from the start — too large for small transactions, too small for major ones, it was consistently the least-used denomination in everyday circulation. Mint records from the period reflect this: production figures for the 4 reales lag far behind the 8 reales and the 2 reales at every assay office that struck them.

The span covered by KM#375 crosses the entire turbulent arc of early Mexican nationhood, from the collapse of the First Empire through the Reform War and into the French Intervention. Through all of it, the denomination persisted largely by bureaucratic inertia rather than commercial demand, finally discontinued when decimal coinage replaced the colonial real system in 1863.