Cut Spanish Silver?

[Capt. Brad]

Hoping someone can help verify and possibly date this piece that I found while relic hunting in SE Virginia. Thanks for looking.

[Mackaydon]

Capt:
It certainly isn't cut like a 'normal' piece of eight (into pie-section bits); appears more like a lawnmower cut. Coin from the Spanish reign of Philip.The denomination can be determined by computing the diameter of the coin. Let us know.
Don....

[realeswatcher]

Your find is a piece of a homeland Spain 1 Real or 2 Reales, undoubtedly from the late 1710s-early 1720s, which is when all the colonial finds date from (note that Spain produced these for 40+ years, then another 60 with the king's portrait, but Spain banned export of their homeland coinage in the 1720's, hence the usual date cutoff in what you'll find here).

The 2R denomination (aka "pistareen", only equivalent to 1/5 of the Spanish peso/8R coin due to devaluation of the homeland Spain small change - many of these issues were in reality even lower weight) is what we usually encounter here, moreso than the 1R. Oddly, your piece looks like it has "I" for the denomination (compare to the II on the 2R example shown). Maybe it's just worn in that spot?

Don is right, the diameter will tell you... a 1R would be about the diameter of a nickel. A 2R would be larger than a quarter, more like the diameter of the current Presidential Dollar (much thinner, though).

[Capt. Brad]

Thanks for the replies and the information. For Realeswatcher, the piece was found in a farm field which may account for the way it was cut. It is approximately the diameter of a nickel as shown in the attached photo. Thank you to everyone for looking and replying.

[Iron Patch]

Capt:
It certainly isn't cut like a 'normal' piece of eight (into pie-section bits); appears more like a lawnmower cut. Coin from the Spanish reign of Philip.The denomination can be determined by computing the diameter of the coin. Let us know.
Don....

If dug in a field probably snapped somehow from the farm equipment. I'm not sure how, but I find lots of broken coppers and a thicker silver coin could probably snap without much bending. On the flip side usually things like silver spoons have rough breaks but I have one with a really clean cut which makes me wonder if it was used like a coin.

[budrow]

I bet the other half of its somewhere near where you found it, I would go back over the same spot to be sure.

[RELICDUDE07]

Cut spanish for sure!I have seen them cut like this and many other ways.It's all about how much they had to spend for the goods they wanted & what they had to cut it with at the time.. Times were tough back in the day