Posted 06/07/2021 7:29 pm
Yes I think they would've reached the colonies. As you note, at that time (before Waterloo), coins were hard to come by even in Britain. That's why this coin exists at all - a 'dollar' minted in desperation by the Bank of England, not the paralysed Royal Mint, over a Spanish 8 reales because that was their only source of silver.
In the colonies, coins were even scarcer, so any coin - at that time worth it's face value in gold, silver or bronze - would've been better than nothing, perhaps even after it was withdrawn in its originating country. Australia had a long list of foreign coins they considered legal tender, but I doubt people limited themselves to those. British coins, like Spanish, were most used because you could trust they contained the right amount of precious metal - even 1 penny cartwheels contained 1 penny of bronze. Calculating the exchange rate for all these currencies was easier when you could go by weight.
In the colonies, coins were even scarcer, so any coin - at that time worth it's face value in gold, silver or bronze - would've been better than nothing, perhaps even after it was withdrawn in its originating country. Australia had a long list of foreign coins they considered legal tender, but I doubt people limited themselves to those. British coins, like Spanish, were most used because you could trust they contained the right amount of precious metal - even 1 penny cartwheels contained 1 penny of bronze. Calculating the exchange rate for all these currencies was easier when you could go by weight.
