1736 8 Reales Pillar

FYI, one nice thing... the seller has a bunch of rather clear edge pics on all of his listings. Save and study :->

Very nice research. Just did my first business with Schulman recently (but I stay far away from Spanish colonials

"Would the small holes be indicative of casting marks?"

Read through the entire thread...

The piece the OP posted (which he bought on ebay, then returned) was Lot 184 from the May 2019 Schulman auction, as I linked.

In general, nobody can authenticate a coin from photographs. The best we can do is point out obvious inconsistencies with what we understand to be the genuine appearance.

Based on the ebay edge photos of the OP coin that realeswatcher kindly linked, I would only believe the edge to have been done on a parallel edging device if the blank was processed twice. Not impossible but certainly not the normal process.

That being said, I would offer the opinion that the OP coin and other linked coin are "market acceptable", meaning that most if not all dealers would sell or auction them without hesitation. That is not the same as declaring them to be genuine; dealers are not in the business of authenticating coins.

As far as I can tell, these pieces have been disbursed without any shipwreck salvage certification so after a number of buys and sells, the average collector may have a difficult time connecting this coin to a group of similarly conserved examples. Yet the weirdly overlapped edge will remain.

I think the OP made the right decision to return the coin and I think any sellers of this coin are going to have to accept a higher probability of a return unless they can get it into a TPG slab.

I don't know how to insert a quote but this is an interesting discussion. I've read most of Bob's book and became interested in 8 Reales. From what I have read, it seems that there is a group of people who believe that counterfeits have been slabbed by the major TPGS. If that is true and I suspect it probably is it would not be a stretch to suggest that fakes have also appeared unattributed as such in auctions.

I agree that it must be difficult for you experts to authenticate coins from images but one member posted proof of a counterfeit by showing a virtually identical specimen. As for the edges of these coins, I makes sense that some genuine coins have edges with an overrun of characters. IMO, that should be no reason to condemn a coin - right?

Another thing I'm not clear about. Some of these coins come with diagonal slash marks into the design on their edge. Theses are shown in Bob's book. Are the coins with these marks considered to be counterfeits? I have seen at least two coins with this edge in major TPGS slabs.

Surely, some member must have a proven counterfeit 8 R slabbed as genuine. I know one poster on other forums has posted a group of C/F cents and Half Cent counterfeits that are slabbed as genuine.

Thanks!! I tried counterfeit 8 reales, 8 reales edges, etc w/no luck but eventually I'll find the correct words to view the arcives.

I realize how much time and effort it takes to answer a question that seems so simple such as : "How do I buy gold?""

I thought the question about the line in the edge characters or the slash marks would take little time. I'll keep reading what you guys post. I may just start a new discussion about the edges.