There were many problems with the situado, part due to unavoidable shortages and part to venality and graft. From the beginning there was a scarcity of currency. Both the Vera Cruz and the Mexico City officials were instructed to deliver the situado to its commissioned collectors in reales, since that was the coin in which to pay soldiers. Yet in spite of repeated injunctions to pay in coined reales (reales acunados) the officials preferred to keep their specie at home. Instead they supplied silver in crudely shaped and stamped chunks called planches or even in assayed ingots (plata ensayada) which the soldiers chopped into pieces. AN81 In 1601 Accountant Juan Menendez Marquez acting as situador could collect only 37% of the total in coin. [Note 24: Diego de Velasco 8/31/1575; cedula to the royal officials of Mexico City 9/18/1604; Bartolome de Arguelles 5/12/1591; Juan Menendez Marquez, Havana 6/1600, sent from St. Augustine 4/13/1601. Ingots were worth two reales less per mark than coined silver (cedula to the royal officials of Vera Cruz 2/9/1580] (Bushnell KC)