Spanish 8 reales silver coin countermarked as 5 shillings

Minted in the Mexico City mint, AD 1782
Countermarked by the Ballindalloch Cotton Works, Elgin, Scotland, around AD 1800

A coin from the New World recycled by a textile company

The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century saw a growth in industrial output and rapid social changes in Great Britain. Textile and iron production were among those industries that became most heavily mechanized. This mechanization created huge factories in various parts of Britain.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century shortages of both copper and silver coinages were a growing problem for local economies. As a consequence of this, local manufacturers, banks, traders, and industrialists began to issue their own coins. One of the forms that this local coinage took was the countermarking of already existing coins from other countries.

Silver coins from the New World were sometimes used, as this silver coin from Mexico shows. As trade expanded with the growth of the British Empire into the Americas as well as Asia, so foreign coin was imported into Britain. This silver coin has been stamped with the local mark of a Scottish cotton works to indicate its value and its issuer.

J. Williams (ed.), Money: a history (London, The British Museum Press, 1997)