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| By Coinman62 at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
"Pieces of eight" refer to Spanish dollars, which were silver coins each worth 8 "reales." They were minted for several hundred years and were legal tender in the United States until 1857. They were preferred by Americans over U.S. minted dollars, as the Spanish version weighed slightly more and had a higher concentration of silver.
It was a common practice to cut the coins into up to eight pie-shaped wedges which could be used for small change. Two of these wedges were equal to one quarter of the dollar and were commonly called "two bits."
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