Cuartillo - Felipe II

Felipe II inherited a monetary system badly strained by the flood of American silver that was simultaneously enriching the Crown and undermining the purchasing power of its base-metal coinage. The cuartillo, a small billon denomination, filled the gap between the copper maravedí coins and the silver reales that most ordinary transactions couldn't reach. Demand for fractional coinage in Castile was chronic throughout his reign, driven partly by the costs of maintaining the Army of Flanders and the domestic price inflation those same American metals caused.

Multiple Castilian mints struck this type across the thirty-two-year span — Segovia, Toledo, Burgos among them — and die quality varied considerably by facility.