Livestock and produce also helped facilitate commercial activity. Due to an insufficient supply of coins in smaller denominations, people would occasionally cut this coin into smaller pieces.
Spanish milled dollars were popular thanks to the consistency in the amount of silver in their composition. For example, British pounds and German thalers changed hands, along with some coins the colonies produced themselves.
In the years before independence, several different kinds of coins circulated in the colonies. Coins in the Colonies and the Early Republic (and Beyond)