1758 Pillar Dollar - Is It Genuine?

Are those scans or photos? It looks washed out in the images but otherwise pretty good. Don't get too hung up on the metallurgy. These shouldn't have gold in them and trace elements of base metals shouldn't be a concern. The weight sounds good.

I cannot tell you that your coin is genuine and you'll likely need to submit it to ANACS or another TPG to be sure. Best of luck!

When you say "These" do you specifically mean pillar 8R or all Mexico 8R in general?

I am still going through Swamperbob's book but his whole thesis is based on the fact that trace amounts of gold SHOULD be found in a genuine 8R from Mexico. I do not recall if it was all of the 8Rs or just the Carlous ones.

Anyway, I don't want to speak on Swamperbob's behalf, I'm sure he will chime in in due time.

Interesting discussion

In my investigation of an 1807 8 Reale coin I visited a coin shopm, a bullion dealer and a Jeweller and asked them to examine the coin with their XRF machines. I have posted the findings at http://goccf.com/t/102023&whichpage=3

Results were as follows:

Coin shop:
Silver (Ag) : 92.61% Copper (Cu) : 7.16% Iridium (Ir): 0.232%

Bullion dealer:
Obverse of coin:
91.7 percent Ag, 7.0 percent Cu, 0.3 percent Au, 0.1 percent Pb
Reverse of coin:
94.2 percent Ag, 5.2 percent Cu, 0.4 percent Au, 0.1 percent Pb.

Jeweller:
92.5% Ag and 7.69% Cu. No other trace metals registered on the XRF scanner.

The way I interpret this is that the Bullion Dealer had the best XRF scanner as this showed up the widest range of trace metals.
The Coin Dealer showed Iridium and I think that this is derived from the primary beam sources.
The Jeweller's XRF machine is simply not sensitive enough to pick the trace metals.

Squire

Apologies, I should have been more concise.
The point of my previous post was to show that from my experience there appears to be great variation in the output of XRF machines, particularly in the detection of trace metals.
With regards to my 1807 8 Reale piece I am quite satisfied with the feedback provided by the knowledgeable CCF members
Squire

Thanks for the reminder QuillPenn1776
Squire

Interesting stuff - thanks for sharing Squire. Though what you say may be true and the Bullion Dealer may have had the best XRF device it could just have been that the other devices were not calibrated properly. I recall swamperbob always noted to make sure that the XRF devices are properly calibrated to detect trace amounts of other metals.

Perhaps John Lorenzo can chime in here as he is the one that did most of the metallurgical analysis on the samples.

@Phillip - it's great to have you chime in but can you please elaborate more on why you think this is a copy? What kind of copy do you believe this to be? A silver plated cast? It shows the correct amount of silver.

Just some "in my humble opinion" commentary. The edge design reversing direction at the overlaps appears on Mexico City minted 8 reales dated 1763 and earlier so no issue there. If Dorado is pointing out in red arrows the different alignment of the devices, that would be no reason to determine genuine or fake, each die was punched by hand and slightly different alignments occur within all dates. If he is pointing to the foot of the "N" being slightly different, that would just be die wear in my opinion.
I try not to make real/fake judgements from pictures, I like to hold the coin and get a feel for it, but this coin does have a few things about it that would concern me and require a close look. What is the diameter of the coin and what does it weigh. With virtually no denticles showing on the bottom half of the reverse (that is the date side by the way) there should be large denticles on the top half , assuming the blank was slightly off center. To have very few denticles all the way around would lead me to believe the planchet was an odd size and that would give me concern since the Mexico mint had this process wired by 1758. (However as we move forward in dates, the planchets do become a bit larger, culminating in the very large diameters of the first two years of the portrait series.) Below are images from two of my 1758s

Your specs are right on the money both weight and diameter.