[Red Badger]

The coin, valued at eight reals........

So it was a piece of eight?................🙄

[SunkenCiv]

I piece of eight is a real cut into eight pieces, a consequence of needing more currency to support daily commerce. Hence the US quarter wound up with the nickname “two bits”.

The Britain the half-penny in the old system began as one of those nice big English copper pennies cut in half, but somewhere around here I’ve got an actual minted halfpenny (”haypenny”) coin dated late but still from before British currency went with a metric-style system, uh, circa 1974.