Iturbide 8 Reales - 1822 - Mexico

The 1753 Pillar 8R is certainly a RARE variety. How many coins in 1753 were made with reeded edges?

Some times the lack of understanding of SIMPLE facts like that is surprising to me. This coin and any like it should get bids no higher than about 10-15 euros as study pieces by fellows like myself or others interested in what a CHEAP fake looks like.

Even without the edge photo which is conclusive - there were other signs that the coin was bogus. I started by enlarging the photo to twice the size they are on ebay. I am barely computer literate but I know that if you copy most ebay pictures to the old paintbrush program you can double the size to get a better view.

When you do that in this case, you can easily see that the dentils are wrong - they stop short of the edge of the coin - this is most pronounced on the edge near VTRAQ and on the other side at ET IND. This is caused by the creation of the fake mold. The mold material shrinks slightly when it sets reducing the diameter slightly (under a mm). So to make the coin the correct size the forger has to add to the diameter of the mold. In this case they did NOT EXTEND the dentils to the edge as they should be.

In the case of ET IND there are three regularly spaced dark spots - I bet those are traces of the effect of original POST STRIKE edging. Of course reeding does not cause this kind of disturbance even if it is done Post Cast.

The second thing to notice is the soft looking details - in person the edges of design elements where they intersect the fields will be rounded instead of being sharp corners. This "look" is something you have to learn through experience. It is hard to even explain. The coin looks wrong.

Anyone can however spot the odd toning cause by exposure to corrosive material of some sort. The irregular black line near the edge on the reverse looks like a pattern of sedimentation cause by this immersion in liquid. I know that immediately someone will think that could be REAL salt water corrosion and they will be right. It could be - but can you be 100% positive from a photo?

I would strongly caution novices in this area of collecting to skip buying seawater salvage material. Not only is this a haven for forgery, they are poor investments. The coins are cheap but the corrosion DESTROYS the value as an investment. The present fascination with shipwrecks will unlikely survive so that these corroded coins will only be worth silver plus a small margin a generation from now.

realeswatcher The price is NOT too tough to swallow at all - just higher than I had anticipated based on ebay averages. The high bidder here was a new player in the game and I do not recall bidding against him previously. He definitely placed a serious bid and I really wonder what caused him to drop out.

I agree with you especially regarding the "actual" rarity of this coin provided it is Contemporary.

In my experience Iturbide 8R forgeries are scarcer than the Hookneck 8R forgeries of which about 50 have been identified as existing by Dave O'Harrow. (In a very recent communication he indicated to me that perhaps 200 exist worldwide - but that was an educated guess based on information and contacts he had received after the publication of his supplement to "Hooknecks" in 2003).

Iturbide counterfeits as a type are also much scarcer than the Portrait 8R contemporary Counterfeits even though many of the Portrait coins are actually known from only 1 example.

I have seen 3 Contemporary Hookneck 8Rs offered on ebay since 1999. But ZERO Iturbide counterfeits. I own at present 4 Hookneck Counterfeit 8R coins BUT ZERO Iturbides. So I am VERY happy.

Based on RARITY, it is likely to be an extremely rare coin. But rarity alone does not always translate to a VERY HIGH price tag. In fact rarity can reduce the amount of collector interest because there are too few coins to support a great many collectors.

Iturbide coins in particular have been and continue to be VERY UNPOPULAR with most Counterfeit collectors I know because Iturbides do not "fit" well into the more Normal Groupings.

Most counterfeit 8R collectors specialize. The field is too broad to take on all types so serious collectors focus on ONE series normally. Colonial Collectors are interested in the Portrait type 8R and/or 2R coins but rarely the Cap and Ray Type. Portrait collectors do not typically collect earlier issues like the Pillars or the Cobs either. On the other end of the 8R spectrum, there are quite a few collectors of Cap and Ray 8R counterfeits, but that is a smaller group than the Colonial Portrait group and they rarely go any earlier than the Hooknecks.

Between these two groups of collectors falls the Iturbide series.

The number of people who collect counterfeits over a wide range in a serious fashion is very low. I am one, but I can not name 3 others.

I expect that the highest level of interest in an Iturbide forgery might come from someone trying to assemble a type set of Contemporary 8R forgeries. Along with the Hookneck it would be a key type.

Wow, I didn't know that contemporary Iturbide fakes were so rare. I was judging from Riddell, who depicted several, and thought that eventually they would show up, but if even Swamperbob doesn't own one?

I really hope this one turns out to be good (that is, contemporary). Allthough the idea of Chinese counterfeiters counterfeiting counterfeits to dupe counterfeit collectors would fit nicely with my misanthropic view of ebay :-)

MathieuMa & dosmundos You say


It has already been done. In fact I have a Modern Fake that I bought as a Riddell Fake.

But I hope not this time. This is not a Riddell style.

The eagle with a snake in it's mouth sitting on a cactus on a hill in the water is an OLD AZTEC symbol. It was sign that determined where the original Aztec settlement which became Mexico City was established.

All this time I thought it was an eagle and it could be a Crested Caracara.

But what is a Caracara?

So I looked it up and it is apparently a Falcon in the Vulture family. Vulture does not sound too good for any national symbol so I wanted to know what it looked like.

So here is a picture I found of a Crested Caracara.



Personally, based on this and the other pictures I found, I think it is a beautiful bird. It has a very prominent dark area on the back of its head which looks like an elongated crest - but which is not really a distinct crest at all but just a change in the color of the feathers. It does resemble facially the bird seen on many 8 Rales. Also I noticed that the leggings on the caracara's legs stop at the knee - they do not go down to near the toes like the Bald Eagle or for that matter most eagles.

The length of the legging on the 8R birds has always seemed odd to me. Perhaps it came from years on the chicken farm but I have always loved birds and a feature like how log the leggings are is something I notice. All 8R coins depict a bird with leggings that do not extend to the toes. The Caracara and the 8R bird has this in common.

Then there is the beak - the Caracara's beak does not hook at the tip like a bird of prey but is curved like a vulture or chicken. That too has been a problem for me when I viewed the range of birds shown on the Mexican 8 Reales. Some 8R birds, like the early Zacatecas birds, have a very deep hook giving them the fearsome look of an eagle while others like the very early Durango coins show a bird with no hook but a simple curve.

However those of us familiar with the various Mexican eagle designs will realize that two of these three features are actually the most variable items on the depictions used on the 8Rs. The bird is depicted with and without a crest. It is also depicted with and without a hooked beak. But it is always depicted with the leggings stopping well above the toes.

So I can see how a Caracara is a very nice match for what the bird on some of the 8R's looks like.

The history of the Mexican Coat of Arms indicates (in most sources I have seen) a reliance on the legend of Tenochtitlan and upon the Codex Mendoza and in some cases on the Codex Fejervary Mayer.

However, I do not see the Caracara as matching the bird from the cover of the Codex Mendoza at all. The codex Mendoza dates to about 1551 or 1552 and is an Aztec Codex depicting the History of the Aztecs. The First page is the page used most often as the precursor to the design used on the Mexican coat of arms. But on the Codex Mendoza there is NO SNAKE at all.

Here is a picture of page 1 of the Codex Mendoza.



Here is a blow up of the central part of the page - the bird itself.



The Mendoza bird has a crest composed of multiple feathers, it has a deep hook in its beak and the leggings extend to the lower leg but stop short of the toes. Pretty good match to the Caracara until you look at the color. That is simply wrong. To me, I think the codex is attempting to depict a bird like a Golden Eagle.






Some articles, as noted above, also refer to a dependence on the Codex Fejervary Mayer an earlier document which shows an eagle attacking a serpent on page one. Here is that illustration.





Not a great likeness of a snake. To me it looks like a small reptile because it seems to be extending one leg.

Just because it was mentioned I will show the image on the Teocalli de la guerra sagrada, a stone copy of a temple that was thought to be a throne. But since it dates to 1831, I do not see how it is definitive when discussing the symbolism adopted decades earlier.




After looking at all the pictures, while I like the Caracara, the bird that everyone seems to want to depict is an eagle of some sort. (But then again, what do I know).


One thing I do know is that the counterfeit of the 1822 Iturbide has arrived and based on my preliminary review appears to be VERY old and struck multiple imes on a very low impact press.

Wow...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/134520516551

I also watched with both interest and awe as the price rose above my personal limit of $1000.

I do own one Iturbide counterfeit which I bought just before I published my book in 2014. As I recall it was over $800 at the time.

This was the first I have seen on ebay, but another copy recently was discovered in Mexico. I saw pictures of that one from a friend. That made two new examples in ONE MONTH.

So now I know of 4 in total - all different dies.