The Golden Age of Piracy, & "Pirate coins"The aforementioned "Golden Age" was a period between the mid-1600s through the 1730s, when privateers & pirates hunted the waters of the North Atlantic, Caribbean, & North Africa ...
...Pirates had strongholds & hideouts to which they could escape, rest, repair boats & equipment, & party (think: Port Royal, Jamaica, mid 1600s..)
...One such pirate hideaway was the backwaters of Chesapeake Bay, where shallow waters & many remote inland rivers would keep the British Naval Militia away ...
...according to local lore, Cole's Point on the James River was one such location, where pirates would hold a version of a "flea market", trading, & buying & selling with locals...
...Spanish coinage was the most popular coinage in the known world in this period ... well accepted because of it's purity & known weight ... Spain's coins commonly circulated here (as legal tender) in the 13 colonies, later, the USA, up through the Coinage Act of 1857...
...many such coins of that era for sale today are marketed as "pirate coins" ( as if pirates had their own special mintage, lol).
...although having no way to attribute such a provenance to these three Spanish coins, these examples were discovered in areas known where pirates would ply their wares ... Next to a coin recovered from the
Whyday, captained by "Black Sam" Bellamy, these could be the closest I'll come to a "pirate" coin, until someone discovers Blackbeard's treasure ...
