Mexican Coins

Mexico operates the oldest mint in the Americas. The Casa de Moneda de México has been striking coins since 1535 — nearly a century before the first English colonists arrived in Virginia — and the silver pesos it produced circulated so widely that they became the foundation for currencies on four continents. The United States dollar, the Chinese yuan, and the Japanese yen all trace their origins, directly or indirectly, to the Mexican silver peso.
 
The coins in this collection carry that weight of influence. Mexico's coinage spans colonial silver reales, revolutionary-era issues struck by competing governments, post-revolution designs featuring Aztec calendars and national heroes, and the modern peso system that emerged from one of the most dramatic currency collapses of the twentieth century. The national emblem — an eagle perched on a cactus, devouring a serpent — has appeared on Mexican coins in some form since independence, a direct link to the Aztec founding myth of Tenochtitlán.
 
Mexico has redenominated its currency more than once, and the coins from either side of those transitions carry the evidence of economies under pressure — rising denominations, changing alloys, and portraits of independence heroes placed on money that was losing its value even as it left the mint. Every Mexican coin is a chapter in a monetary history that stretches nearly five hundred years and has shaped the way the world thinks about money.