As a collector of British sixpences it is no surprise that on the addition of Napoleonic and Spanish coinage I was drawn to the smaller denominations. Often these are less well documented than crowns and the gold coinage and as such there are often new varieties that remain to be discovered.

In my collection I have a Mexican 1773 half real coin where the King's name is spelt CAROLS rather than the usual CAROLUS - in this case a well-known variety (Calico 2019: 196, Cayon 11118, it's even in Krause KM#69.2). You will have to forgive the terrible scan, I blame my example being very dark and low grade. Along side is a 1805 half real depicting his son Charles IV as IIII - just to prove that there was plenty of room for the extra 'U'.

I wonder what the penalty was in those days for making that mistake!

And people think quality control at some mints is bad today but in the 18th century no one was worrying about MS70.