Which Reminds Me

One day during high school our Spanish teacher was talking about the voyage of Christopher Columbus, in which the Italian adventurer sailed forth across the Atlantic Ocean in three small boats and discovered the New World, an expedition commissioned by the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, and accounted for in maravedís, a Spanish coin of relatively small unitary value. But great things may be found in small denominations as well as large ones, which is, yes, perhaps as good a point to make as any. Why are we talking about this?