1796 8 Reale

Such a dark tone need not necessarily come from lots of grubby hands touching it in circulation, but of course could simply be a product of how it was stored.

I can sort of see what you're thinking about how the tone may be artificial... as it's very uniformly chocolate. I think, however, that is just reflective of a long period of storage in a reactive environment... with the brighter areas just indicating some friction from physical shifting over the years.



You handle some Colonial portrait reales material... never noticed that effect in the denticle area? What EXACTLY causes that, I couldn't tell you, but it is seen on Mex mint pieces of all denominations.

Doctors .. have been keeping me busy this week.

Just now had time to take some pics.

It's a philosophical issue Bob. I mean if you have to spend $100 to have an advanced analysis done on a $50 coin to maybe tell the difference between genuine or type 2, it's just not practical.

As many forum readers already know we have a new book coming out in early 2015 or so (maybe - earlier) from the American Numismatic Society on these Portrait 8 Reales in terms of determining between regal and counterfeit. All the attribution tools you need will be in this book even XRF analysis interpretations.

John Lorenzo
United States

I believe having to test every coin is overkill. Die features that match are solid evidence and I think the majority of people would agree with you on that.

Seems like that was mostly the one guy speaking in defense of coins they were selling. I have faith that once the book comes out it will be a game changer in this regard. Too much effort has been put in to lose hope in the final stretch :)

My Two Cents: it would be essential, as part of the "proof", to have a statistically meaningful calibration of the analysis. I. e. test a group of what we know are pre 1810 coins (say, like the hoard from Haiti I handled 6 or so years ago of about 1000 pieces) and see whether those results are ok with the documentation and consistent within themselves. The pool of pieces to calibrate "pre-1810" readings has to be substantial.
Other points:
- the Madrid and Mexico mints carried fineness testings that were accurate at the time, and records of those still exist. If our (your) tests of coins that are provingly pre 1810 do not match those historical tests, then there is a problem with the methodology.
- Do post 1787 8 Reales show the decrease in fineness that is to be expected from the secret royal ordinance of 1786?
- edge mills are not entirely similar between them. The Lima pieces have a characteristic edge, entirely different from the Mexico and Potosi pieces.

Sometimes modern results are not reliable or not easy to interpret. I recently catalogued a couple of rare 1646 Necessity Florins from the Dutch Brazilian series. Historical records show that these were indeed struck from gold that came in a vessel coming from Africa which presumably was bringing gold from the ducth controlled mines there. But modern testing of those coins showed that the metal was different from the Islamic coins struck with gold of the period and region.
The authors concluded that the coins were NOT struck from african gold.
But in my opinion, this was a mistake: either the tests had methodological errors, or their initial hypothesis (that the Islamic coins were indeed struck from the same African gold) was flawed: if the historical records state clearly that the gold used came from gold carried by those vessels, I have no reason whatsoever to doubt it. So either that gold (from the vessel) did not came from those African mines, or the comparison test of Islamic coins was flawed.

I actually saw one of these over the past weekend at a small coin show, and it was absolutely gorgeous - white in the center with a narrow band of gold to blue toning along the rim. The strike was just perfect, I mean, this example was MS-69, and I don't think I'm exaggerating at all. My reaction was that it scared me, that there was no way it could be original in that condition. Price was $900.