May 4th, 2016: casa de la moneda

[xoxoxoBruce]

When Spain was pillaging South America, they sent shiploads of silver back to Spain.
The silver ore was refined and silver cast into ingots. Then somebody said we’ve plenty of slave labor to
convert the ingots into coins, the real de a ocho, or Spanish Dollar, and just ship them. If they’d listened
to the wind they might of heard a hundred pirates chanting do it, do it, do it, as ingots were unknown
quality, but real de a ocho, or more often a piece of the eight, were common currency everywhere.
Actually it was the most common(trusted) currency in the US until the 1790s.

Casa de la Moneda - Potosí (Bolivia)
This is the old Spanish mint where the silver from the mines of Potosí was transformed into coins.
The original minting machines are preserved in a near-perfect state.
The oldest machines were made of huge wooden gears and powered by slaves or animals(availability).

Later they used steam-powered machines, but luckily they kept the old machines untouched (just in case!).
This huge building is now a national museum.

This is the gearing for the rolling machine to flatten the blank material.


The Dude in charge of the operation from 1569 to 1581 was the King’s Viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, Count of Oropesa.
Personally I think the Viceroy was skimming because I stayed in his house for a couple weeks. Not in South America,
his castle in Oropesa, Toledo(Castile-La Mancha), Spain, which is now a 4.4 star Parador(fancy hotel).

This is a slave/animal drive system............................. and a coin stamping machine.


I haven't checked to see how many of these coins were shipped to Spain, or what percentage actually got there
but I know it was many, many shiploads.