TYB
The face of the bottom half is like a distorted reflection
Been dead according to some, would be nice if they finally made it official
pieces of eight
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The spanish dollar, manufactured in Mexico and Bolivia, made from silver from the spanish empire. The 'eight' refers to the number of pieces into which each coin could be cut in order to give change. The pirate connotation comes from the plundering of said pieces on the spanish main.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pieces%20of%20eight
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piece%20of%20eight
They sure are purty
How did people cut "pieces of eight"?
The Spanish silver peso was a very common coin consisting of "fine quality silver, assayed at .931 or .916," according to CoinWeek. Under some circumstances one peso coins, worth eight reales, would be cut into slivers to separate those reales from each other. While some sources downplay the coin cutting, saying it's held to have been more common than it truly was, it clearly happened.
How did people cut the coins? Did this require going to a blacksmith, or were they soft enough to snip or chop up with household tools?
The usual method was with a hammer and a cold chisel. A large stone would suffice as an anvil. Coins are fairly small and thin, and the silver coins of the period were quite soft, as you can see from the wear on the example in your picture. A blacksmith would be able to do this easily, as would almost anyone with basic metal-working skills and tools. Blacksmiths were more common in period than today, of course, and a higher proportion of people would have owned the necessary tools.
The division of coins into halves, quarters and eighths follows naturally from cutting them by hand. It's much easier to cut things into successive halves with reasonable accuracy than it is to cut tenths.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/58540/how-did-people-cut-pieces-of-eight
Are we getting outta the woods?