Pieces of Eight: The Pirate Coin That Built the Dollar

"Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" squawks Captain Flint, Long John Silver's parrot, in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. That line made the phrase famous, but the coins were real, and they mattered far more than most people realize.

The world's first global currency

A "piece of eight" was the Spanish silver dollar, the real de a ocho, worth eight reales. Spain minted huge numbers of them from the silver mines of the Americas, and for about three centuries they moved through trade routes from Mexico to Manila to China. Ships full of them crossed the oceans, which is exactly why pirates went after those ships. People even cut the coins into pieces to make change, and that's where the old expression "two bits" for a quarter dollar comes from.

The coins were so trusted that the young United States based its own dollar on them, and Spanish dollars stayed legal tender in America until 1857. The pirate coin in the movies is a real ancestor of the money in your wallet.

Our treasure

We 3D print our "pieces of eight" to echo the look of the historic coins, then brush each one with a silver finish that gives it an aged, buried-for-centuries look. Each set comes with five coins, each almost 1.5 inches across, and they're satisfyingly coin-like in the hand.

What to do with pirate treasure

• Tabletop games and escape rooms, as loot that feels real
• Pirate parties and treasure hunts: bury them in the sandbox
• Classroom props for lessons on trade, money and the age of sail
• Cosplay and theater, with a pouch of coins on the belt
• Gifts for history buffs, coin collectors and anyone who still dreams of the high seas

More history you can hold

Our Demon Core replica is another real piece of history, this time from the Manhattan Project, and it's the same size as the original.

There are more ideas in gifts for dad and our 3D printed guide.