HAMPTON, Va. - I recently visited the Hampton History Museum to check out a piece of local history.
"Today we are looking at a couple of coins." Kris Peters, educator at the Hampton History Museum describes them, "They're made out of silver, and they're fairly tarnished, because they're about 300 years old. They were both minted in the 17th century in Central and South America."
During the colonial period, most European countries didn't want coinage circulating in the colonies. But because Spain was manufacturing coins in Central America, they ended up working their way through the rest of the colonies.
"The port of Hampton was a very important one for Virginia and a lot of commerce came through this area. Because of that you saw a lot of goods being imported in to the colony. You saw a lot of tobacco and natural resources being shipped out."
These coins are not as perfect as the ones you would have found in Spain because the colonies had a more crude technique.
Peters describes the process... "The way coins were made at the time, you would take silver and you would roll it into a sheet kind of like making rolled sheet metal today. You would roll it into a sheet of uniform thickness, and then blanks would be cut out of it called planchets. The planchet, it is going to be the right weight for the coin that you want to make, it then gets put into the die and struck to put the print on each side."
"Well, in the American colonies, the Spanish didn't have all of that proper equipment. So what they would do is basically take a bar of silver and a chisel. They would just slice off a piece of metal, weigh it, trim it down with knives and chisels until it's the right weight. Then lay it on a die and smash it with a hammer to get the same value and the same coin. It's just not as pretty as the ones that would have been made in Spain. So that's why these two coins here have such an irregular shape."
Coins like these were a big part of commerce in colonial Virginia and eventually grew into modern day cash.
"The two that we have are worth eight reals, and the real is the unit of currency. One real becomes the basis for the US dollar later on." Peters adds, "But that is where we got our standard of currency from at the beginning of the United States."
The Hampton History Museum is located on Old Hampton Lane. The museum is open Monday to Saturday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. Admission is $5 for adults and $4 for seniors, active military, active NASA, AAA and children (4–12). Children under 4 are free.
