You are right. "pieces of eight" seems to come from the phrase pieces of eight reals, with the real being the Spanish unit of silver money. Although I would gue

You are right. "pieces of eight" seems to come from the phrase pieces of eight reals, with the real being the Spanish unit of silver money. Although I would guess and this site states that they did get cut up from time to time to make change[1]. [1]https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/march05/iotm.cfm https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3...