Other than knowing they were some type of coins, which were apparently important to pirates, few people are really sure what “pieces of eight” were. Of course, anyone can look such a thing up for themselves, but here are some handy facts.
In simplest terms, they were valuable silver coins (surprise!), but the story begins with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. (For time orientation: these were the monarchs who sponsored the voyage of Christopher Columbus in which he first reached the “New World.”) One of the coins used in Spain was the silver real (“royal”) coin. In the late 1400s, Ferdinand and Isabella did away with other coinage and standardized the real. This coin was issued in various denominations from 1/4 real to 8 reales. The largest coin, as valuable as eight of the standard reales, became known as a peso de ocho (8) reales or real de ocho, a “piece of eight.”
Originally these silver coins were minted at a few major cities in Spain. However, large deposits of silver were later discovered in Latin America, after which minting of reales began in Mexico and what is now Peru. The richest source for many years was Cerro Potosi, a mountain in the central Andes (in the modern country of Bolivia); silver has been mined there from the mid-1500s to the modern day.
Silver coins from Spain’s colonies in America not only went back to Spain; they were extensively used in trade. The most efficient way to transport the silver was in the largest denomination of coin – it was much easier to ship 100 reales de ocho than to send 800 smaller coins. They were shipped to the Philippines (where they were used in trade in Asia) and to other colonies around the world. The pieces of eight also were extensively used in the British colonies in America and later in the United States, where they were legal to use as payment until 1857. The pieces of eight became the first major international currency.
Using such valuable coins as currency had drawbacks, however. Imagine having to pay for everything with $50 bills, without any smaller bills available to make change, and you will have some idea of the situation. In order to make change or pay for less-costly items, people would cut a real do ocho into wedges, similar to cutting a pie. The pieces were called “bits”; each piece (if cut evently) would be the equivalent of one real.
Apparently the close association in people’s minds of pieces of eight and pirates is due to the book Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, where Long John Silver’s parrot frequently squawks, “Pieces of eight!” With or without a parrot, though, any pirates in your roleplaying game will thank you for plenty of valuables to take as plunder.
You can read about pieces of eight everywhere from Wikipedia to sites for coin collectors, and more. Here are a few.
A History of the World in 100 Objects, from the BBC and the British Museum – https://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/JO391t6cRtGxstjbE4EEmg
https://dustyoldthing.com/pieces-of-eight-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar
“Rich Mountain” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Rico
City of Potosi – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potos%C3%AD
