50.5 pesos (TV1r)

The gloss for this notation for large quantity of pesos partly involves a Roman numeral, "L," for 50. The peso was worth eight tomines or eight reales. Given low rates of pay, these smaller values were very common in Nahua communities. These lesser coins might be marked with a number of dots (for example, two dots would mean the notation represents two tomines or the value of a quarter of a peso). A half peso, if not actually cut in half as we see here, might have the number 4 written on it, sometimes tipped sideways (as shown below).

It is a challenge to differentiate between the panitl (or pamitl), pantli, and tecpantli, for they look very much alike most of the time. For now, when the banner has an association with a number, we are using pantli or tecpantli, depending upon how it is glossed, and when it is a phonetic locative for a place name, we are using panitl. Apparently panitl was more common in "Mexico, the Tepanec heartland, and perhaps Colhuacan and Chalco," and pamitl in "northern and eastern flanks of the Valley of Mexico" [see: Jorge Klor de Alva, in The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-century Aztec Mexico (Albany, NY: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, the University at Albany, State University of New York, 1988), 323]. As glyphs come in to this collection from regions where pamitl is more common, we will abide by that orthography.