Đồng Xu "Piece of Eight"

The Spanish Dollar, or the eight real silver coin, was an international currency at the beginning of international commerce and is famous in popular culture under it's nickname “piece of eight”, by physically dividing the coin into eight bits, you could create your own change.

The Spanish Dollar wasn't designed to be divisible by eight, the soft silver mostly made it possible. This coin is designed to be cut with a scissor or scalpel (I guess a pizza slicer might work?) into up to eight pieces. It should be sturdy enough to not break on its own, yet pliable enough to assist you in cutting it into pieces.

I've made one 42mm version (close to the original's 38mm) with a compass rose and one which is blank for you to add your own design.

The idea is that you could use this for your table top roleplaying adventures, in particular for a pirate-y setting where the pieces of eight are famous as both loot and trading currency. You can use them as prop coinage or you can use them as a less finer-grained stand in for experience points, which allows you to grant a visible token of progression to your players without having to resort to xp counting. Regardless of what you choose to do, these coins provides a compact format that lets you handle ratios with ease.

I might continue to add more face designs, shapes, add a reverse side, add texture to the edges, string holes, and various other tweaks. More than anything, I kind of enjoy the idea of these coins and hope that you'd like to join me in spreading the spark of joy that is physically chopping up coins for change, whether that's by telling your friends and family about how cool the Spanish dollar was, printing and using this design, or making your very own pieces of eight design.