1/2 Real - Felipe IV

Felipe IV's reign saw the Lima mint producing cob coinage — macuquinas — under conditions that made precise weight and fineness enforcement deeply inconsistent. The 1659 date falls within a period of documented fraud at the Lima mint: an investigation launched in the 1640s had already implicated assayers in systematically debasing silver, and prosecutions continued into the following decades. Surviving dated examples from this window are relatively scarce precisely because production accountability was so poor that many pieces were melted or rejected upon assay.