Design
Pillar dollar (two worlds)
Columnario de dos mundos
The pillar dollar of the two worlds is the 8-real silver type that shows the Pillars of Hercules and two globes — the Old and New Worlds — with the motto PLUS VLTRA. In eighteenth-century American mints it replaced the earlier portrait eight-real and became the most recognised trade coin of the Atlantic. At Santafé de Bogotá the type is almost unique: the Casa de Moneda Museum’s permanent-exhibition booklet highlights the 1762 patacón. Hernández plates and price columns are not republished here, nor are auction hammers.
A pillar dollar is not a cob: the cob is the irregular hammered macuquina; the pillar dollar is a mill disc, with a round planchet and mint, assayer, and date legends. It is not the later portrait of Charles III or Charles IV either. Notofilia’s news note on the Heritage lot of a 1762 8 reales, mintmark NR, assayer JV, slabbed PCGS AU50, describes a market comparable, not a holding in this collection. Certificate 37262548 is not a Notofilia object.
This Colombian numismatics case does not yet publish a pillar 8 reales. The 1820 Santa Marta siege copper — a 1/4 real, a cross dividing S and M — is another object, of another war and another metal. It is linked here only as a door to the mint and the peso, not as a pillar dollar. When a Santafé patacón enters the catalogue it will carry its own mint, assayer, and certificate; until then the term lives in the glossary and in the coin case, without inventing a piece.