8 Maravedis - Felipe IV Coruna

Felipe IV's later billon coinage was the product of repeated monetary crises that plagued the Spanish crown throughout the mid-seventeenth century. Chronic fiscal exhaustion from decades of war — the Thirty Years' War, the ongoing conflict with Portugal, the Fronde — forced the crown into successive currency debasements, with copper and billon maravedis revalued, countermarked, and reissued so frequently that commerce in Castile was badly disrupted. The Coruña mint, one of several pressed into service for this fractional coinage, operated under conditions that did little to encourage consistency.

Specimens from this issue are frequently encountered with weak or misaligned strikes, a predictable result of overstretched provincial minting operations.