Let’s start from the begining.

I allways considered myself as a pirate and i will tell you one of the principal reasons. I’m a pirate son.

Once upon a time, when in the region of Spain that i was born, the pioneers of the rock climbing as my father were starting to open
new ways and climbing paths, when the equipement and money to buy it was limited, my father and friends were steeling the homemade
material used for the climbing that suposed to be left to be used by the next group of climbers. That’s the reason why they became called
the pirates of the mountain.

Following my father’s path, i became a climber too but in this new generation was no need to steel but a sense of freedom came to my life
and led me in order of other things, to buy a van and live on it for a long period of time. I became a pirate on my own sailing with my van here and there, living a dream
and a bohemian life. This part of me was allways there and i still feeling and acting as pirate, trying to follow my own path, beeing an outsider, no following the
rules and now, using an element distinctive of this mindset; the old Spanish currency called “real de a ocho” known in English as “pieces of eight”.

I’m starting to add this coin to my best and premium hats. Only on the custom and classics categories you will be abe to find this distinctive piece.

Let me tell you a bit of story of this legendary currency.

The Spanish dollar, also known as the piece of eight (Spanish: real de a ocho, dólar, peso duro, peso fuerte or peso), is a silver coin of approximately 38 mm (1.5 in) diameter worth eight Spanish reales. It was minted in the Spanish Empire following a monetary reform in 1497 with content 25.563 g (0.8219 ozt) fine silver. It was widely used as the first international currency because of its uniformity in standard and milling characteristics. Some countries countermarked the Spanish dollar so it could be used as their local currency.

Because the Spanish dollar was widely used in Europe, the Americas, and the Far East, it became the first world currency by the 16th century.

To understand the birth of the currency, we must go back to the 14th century, when the real was minted in Castile, a silver coin created by King Pedro I (1350-1369). The real weighed between 3.43 and 3.48 grams, had a fineness of 11 dinars and four grains, and a mintage of 67 coins per mark. Its diameter was between 25 and 26 millimeters, and its value at the time was 3 maravedís. Under the reign of John II of Castile, the real was worth 7 maravedis, and later, at the beginning of the Catholic Monarchy, it was worth 31 maravedis, and 34 maravedis from 1497, the year of the publication of the Pragmatic Monetary Reform of Medina del Campo, which established the first 8-real coins.

After the conquest of the territories that today constitute Mexico and Peru, the 8-real coins were minted in America under the denomination of the Spanish real and transported in bulk to the Crown of Castile, making this transport a tempting target for pirates and privateers. Its use also spread throughout Southeast Asia, as the Manila Galleon periodically transported silver coins from Mexico to Manila, in the Philippines, where they were to be exchanged for Chinese and Filipino goods, as silver was the only foreign commodity that China accepted as payment. In Eastern trade, Spanish 8 reales were often stamped with Chinese characters, indicating that they were genuine coins.

Due to the vast silver deposits discovered primarily in Potosí (in present-day Bolivia) and, to a lesser extent, in Mexico (for example, in Guanajuato, Taxco, and Zacatecas) between 1545 and 1548, the mints of Bolivia, Mexico, and Peru began minting coins in the 16th century, resulting in millions of 8 reales being minted during the several centuries of Spanish presence.

Smuggling of various goods became common beginning in the 17th century between Spanish territories and ships from Great Britain and Holland; this allowed coins minted in the mints of the Spanish Monarchy to circulate outside Spanish jurisdiction. The Thirteen British Colonies in North America soon began using the 8-real due to the fineness of its silver content and its relative abundance in the market, greater than the currency of their own mother country.

Spanish trade with China, using the Philippines as a base, led to the spread of the 8-real in Southeast Asia as well. At a time when the value of a coin was determined by its intrinsic silver or gold content, the fineness of the 8-real made this coin unofficially the currency of exchange for international trade in East Asia. The arrival of American merchants in China in the late 18th century further boosted the use of the Spanish dollar, as the 8-real was known in English.

The real de a 8 thus became the most widely used currency during the colonial period in the Americas, and due to its high intrinsic value as well as its fineness, it continued to be used in North America and Southeast Asia until the 19th century. When these silver coins arrived in Europe, they were compared to the large silver coins minted by Austria: the thaler (translated into Spanish as talero). Despite its popularity in Europe, the Austrian thaler was not as widely used worldwide as the real de a 8. However, its names in French and English (thaller and daller) led to the real de a 8 being called the Spanish daller in the United States, from which the Spanish dollar later derived, later shortened to simply the dollar.

Throughout the 16th century, various kingdoms, not only along the Mediterranean trade borders but also along the new Atlantic routes, in the viceroyalties and captaincies general of the new continent, financed their enterprises with the currency of Castile. The 8-real reached not only the West but also the global East through trade with the Far East. It was in this part of the world where this powerful currency would have a particular influence, as the Mexican “piastre” system (the name by which the Mexican mint’s 8-real piece was known among indigenous people) would serve as a model for current currencies. This is the case with the tael (China), the yen (Japan), the won (Korea), and it has even served as a model for the dollar, the silver currency of the North American states. It was created using a decimal system with the political intention of destabilizing the Spanish 8-real coin and, with it, its economy.

A 1792 U.S. monetary system act created the United States Mint. Although the first U.S. dollars were not as popular as the Spanish dollars, as the latter were heavier and made of finer silver. Because of this, the value of the U.S. dollar was equated to that of the real de a ocho (eight-real) to boost its international reputation:

The most important currency circulating in the Americas was, by far, the Spanish dollar, which consisted of 387 grains of pure silver. The dollar was divided into “pieces of eight” or “bits,” each of which was equal to one-eighth of a dollar. Spanish dollars reached the North American colonies through the lucrative trade with the West Indies. The dollar had been the world’s most prominent currency since the early 16th century and was spread in part thanks to the massive silver production of the Spanish viceroyalties in the Americas. More importantly, however, the Spanish dollar, from the 16th to the 19th century, was relatively the most stable and least devalued currency in the Western world.

One 8-real had a nominal weight of 550.209 Spanish grains, or 27.468 grams in the metric system; with a purity of 93.055%, this meant that the 8-real contained 25.560 grams of silver, although its weight and purity varied significantly between mints over the centuries. In contrast, the aforementioned U.S. law of 1792 specified that the U.S. dollar would contain 27 grams of weight, of which only 24.1 grams was silver.

8-reals had a nominal value of 8 reales in Castile and its viceroyalties, but the need for fractional coinage meant that the pieces were often physically cut into four or eight pieces to achieve smaller change. A curious fact is that in American English the quarter is called two bits, a reminder of this practice. Outside the Spanish universal monarchy, it was very difficult to obtain Spanish silver coins with denominations smaller than the 8-real, so the physical division of the coin was the only way to obtain fractions and subsequently reseal them for use. This also occurred during the wars of independence of the Spanish viceroyalties when the pieces fell into the hands of the insurgents.

In 1686, during the reign of Charles II, the currency suffered a major devaluation. Despite the great economic work carried out by the king’s advisors, a certain loss of currency hegemony could not be avoided. The consequences of this devaluation were not seen until the mid-18th century, when the pound sterling, created in 1694, emerged as a rival to the real.

In Australia, at the beginning of the 19th century, the colony had only recently been founded decades earlier, and faced with social and economic instability due to the lack of monetary supply, the governor of New South Wales, In 1812, Lachlan Macquarie, a South Welshman, decided to import 40,000 Spanish eight-real coins to stabilize the situation.

The Spanish coin was legal tender in the United States until its use was banned in 1857. While it circulated in the United States, the eight-real coin was worth one dollar. Interestingly, for example, the price of shares on the United States stock market, denominated in eighths of a dollar, continued until June 24, 1997, when the New York Stock Exchange converted this denomination to sixteenths of a dollar, although it switched to decimal notation shortly afterward.

The eight-real coin is the basis for the American and Philippine pesos, the US dollar, and is also the origin of the Chinese yuan, the Japanese yen, the Korean won, the Australian dollar, and the Canadian dollar. In Spain, the eight-real coin, or hard peso, was renamed simply the hard coin. The first coin bearing this word was minted as an emergency coin in Girona in 1808, during the siege by French troops. The eight-real silver duro was later defined as 20 reales de vellón, or five pesetas. From the 1940s, coins were minted in cupronickel, and disappeared with the arrival of the euro.