8 Reales

The Mexican 8 Reales served as the backbone of international trade for centuries, circulating legally in the United States until 1857 and remaining the dominant coin of Asian maritime commerce well into the nineteenth century. Chinese merchants chopped them — punching small stamped marks into the surface to verify silver content — and a heavily chopped example today tells a story of repeated re-authentication across dozens of transactions.

KM#377 covers the constitutional republic period, during which eight different assayers across multiple mints struck the type simultaneously. Oaxaca, Culiacán, Alamos, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Hermosillo, San Luis Potosí, and Mexico City each left their own assayer initials, making this one of the most varied series in all of Latin American numismatics by die and mint combination alone.