Potosi 8Reales Cob Values

Here are the other sides of the 8R, they should be in the same order as the obverse 5 pictures.

Great information. These coins were brought to me through a customer of ours because of the "little" knowledge I have of coins. We are probably going to end up selling them for the customer.

Im not to familiar with the rules on transactions here, but were you interested in these? If I crossed a CCF boundary forgive me there.

The basic info that Mathieu gave you is what you need to know. However, regarding dates, FYI, that first piece IS 1760... but that second piece is 1753 (not 63), and the third piece 1764, not 1760.

Do note those catalog prices are Euros, not dollars (that catalog is out of Spain). As suggested, though, ebay Completed Items are probably your best gauge (as I'm guessing that's where they'll likely end up, anyway). Realistically, I'd say those "should" generally be in the $175-275 range, their "issue" being pretty negligible in terms of affecting value (see below). Of course, there's always the chance that the "shoot for the moon and wait for an idiot to come along" technique could garner some more $$ with some patience - not really a business plan I advocate.

Fairly nice "land find" patina on all of them, generally average condition/strike on them (that 1753 has the nicest strike of the bunch)... The curious thing about these pieces, though, is that at least 4 of the 5 have definitely been contemporaneously clipped down somewhat - note the straight-edge cuts on 1760, 1753, 1764, and 1744. Those familiar with these will recognize that cuts like that aren't mint-caused. You see this sometimes on mid-1600's Mexico cobs and also on later Potosi cobs like these. Aside from the always-possible reason of "shaving" a bit off, which those cuts seem too blatant for, apparently "they" sometimes did this to conform a foreign coin down to some local denomination/standard.

I've never heard of this "hoard" before (not that that means anything). There is another North Africa hoard on the market called by similar names ("Morocco Hoard", "Barbary Coast Hoard"), but with earlier pieces from MEXICO (no Potosi that I've seen) all dating right around 1700-1710. Clearly these are from a different source... For informational purposes, what else do the COAs/paperwork say - do they show a name of a marketing company, or anything else? In fact, if you could post a scan or decent photo of the COA itself, that would be interesting to see.

Sedwick's book on cobs is a good outline, and you can get an idea of current prices on their website. For late Potosi pieces, $150-250 seems like a fair price.

The book also has a good list of known wrecks and the scarcity/type of cobs from those wrecks.

"Regarding the book I posted, it's prices in euros, for coins in excellent condition with almost all features visible."

That's true, though I might say that for the Pillars-style Potosi cobs, the spread between the values given in Calico and "average" examples is probably less than for other series. I've seen pretty strong market demand for these over the past few years...

Thanks for posting the COA, MorganMatt... My friend Google shows that "Artifacts Ltd." is (was?) apparently a gift shop type of establishment in the Caymans which handled/sold other Spanish material like 1715 Fleet and 1733 Fleet (pieces with their COAs have popped up in Sedwick auctions here and there). God only knows what the tourist trap in-store prices were... Can't find any other references to this "hoard"... presumably it was some small metal detected cache they came into contact with. I have a piece kind of along those lines from a "Touristy" type place that supposedly was from a Virgin Islands land hoard... people bury money everywhere, and it a lot of the worlds, it was Spanish silver they were burying.

In terms of the North Africa thing, I can't help thinking of the guy in Algeria who used to post his finds on the TreasureNet cob forum... He came up with a whole bunch of mixed Spain/Mexico/a few Potosi cobs (I have all of his group pics saved). He used to lament (and not in a scam way, it seemed...) in his comically broken English that he knew the Western market liked this stuff but he would encounter great difficulty trying to get it out of his country. He found a whole bunch of nice Roman stuff as well...

Impressive :)
Actually spain was working closely with north africa, and even emitted coins for Oran in Algeria under Felipe III and Charles II.
I'm not surprised that he found some of those here (considering that before minting money, they were at least trading a lot)

THQ, interesting tip... but where are they? I've peeked at his site b4, never noticed those, and a more thorough search isn't locating them? Do you have a precise link?