4 Reales - Felipe V

The 1732 date marks a turning point in Mexican minting history: that year, the Mexico City mint introduced the milled "macuquina nueva" coinage to replace the cob-style pieces that had dominated Spanish colonial production for nearly two centuries. The 4 Reales denomination bridged the old hand-struck tradition and the fully mechanized milled coinage that would follow. Felipe V himself ordered the transition, partly in response to chronic fraud enabled by the irregular weight and shape of cob coinage.

The 1733 fleet disaster, in which a hurricane sank eleven ships carrying colonial silver off Florida, involved coins from this precise transitional period — recovered examples have appeared in auction with documented salvage provenance.