8 Escudos - Felipe V

Felipe V ascended to the Spanish throne in 1700 as the first Bourbon king, triggering the War of the Spanish Succession almost immediately — a conflict that dragged on until 1714 and stretched colonial minting operations thin. The Mexico City Mint continued striking macuquina, or cob coinage, throughout this period using the same irregular hammer-struck method unchanged for nearly two centuries, despite Bourbon reformers already agitating for milled coinage back in Madrid.

The transition to round, milled eight escudos at Mexico City would not come until the 1730s. Every example from this issue is a product of that older, deliberately crude process — weight-correct but geometrically accidental.