Is My 1732 Pillar Dollar Real?

Sorry to say it is a counterfeit.

co-ask, from what place can tell it is a fake one?

Also fake to me, the edge is wrong.

Jfransch... Very curious that this piece would appear to have the same die arrangement as Mel Fisher's infamous 1732 Mo MF pillar 8Rs (supposedly from the 1733 Fleet), yes? I've attached a comparison pic of (3) known Fisher pieces vs. this one - same detail placement, etc., no? A discussion of these Fisher pillars is at this forum thread:

1733 Fleet - Mel Fisher Pillar Dollar
colonialcobs.com/forum/index.php?topic=125.0

Be sure to download and read the file attachment in that post... a detailed writeup about these pieces from a now defunct website called Mexican Coin Magic. Not exactly sure who wrote the article... reference to a FoxLair Partners at the bottom along with a phone number, should be easy enough to figure out if you were curious. It reads a little like another fanciful Fisher tale, but there's a lot of actual detail interspersed in there. Interesting to note that the 1732 Mo F pillar 8R photo dcap47 linked from Carl Clegg's Columnarios.com website is the EXACT coin shown in the Mexican Coin Magic article as one of the other pieces Fisher procured along with the "1732 Mo MF" pieces. The Mex. Coin Magic article captions its photo of the piece as "Unlisted" (at the end of the article, the author clarifies that he owns that piece and the 1732 Mo MF he also showed). However, Clegg's page uses the pic of this piece as an example of Gilboy 1732-M-8-1. Can someone with the Gilboy book clarify this? If that's correct... does that mean that one type of these Fisher pieces IS an accepted die variant (if not necessarily legitimate examples thereof)... but the 1732 MoMF (which show the same style of environmental impact as that 1732 Mo F) is not? So, if the 1732 Mo MF pieces are indeed fabrications, does that mean a later MF reverse style was muled with a 1732 pillars-side to produce them?

Anyway, the coin dcap47 posted shows no real sign of any "sea corrosion" (natural or otherwise)... just some slight roughness which sort of looks like that seen on many of the recent Chinese fakes. It COULD just be a fairly recent fake... but depending on when/where the piece emanated from, almost makes me wonder if we aren't maybe seeing some kind of "pre-treatment" version of one of these Fisher pieces... which would be evidence that they were indeed all modern fabrications. However, dcap's piece has an edge pattern that seems pretty obviously imperfect for normal pillars. Dcap's pics showed both "reversals" in the edge pattern clearly... and neither shows a true "overlap", but rather an exactly spaced transition. This is sort of similar to the what's seen on the reversal visible in the first edge pic of that Fisher-type 1732 Mo F on the Columnarios.com site... That said, I don't like the overall look of the edge pattern on dcap's piece (has no "relief"... looks flat).

On the topic of the edge pattern... I wouldn't think that if Fisher WAS trying to "pass" these that he would use a blatantly incorrect edge style... Can anyone here confirm if known genuine examples of these first few years of milled/security edge pieces in Mexico involved a slightly different style of edge pattern execution as described above? Does Gilboy say anything on this, and/or has Bob touched on this at all? Jfransch, you have a few early pillar 8R, yes? What do the edge patterns show? Anything along these lines?

"Apparently, the vast majority of coins at the time were for the common folk, but according to him, there was also a rare variant intended only for the immediate royal family that very few people knew about."

The notion you are referring to refers to a different style of coinage altogether and does not apply specifically to what we're discussing... There do exist "Royal" presentation versions done of the earlier, cruder cob coinage (cobs, in layman's terms, were cruder non-round hunks of metal, struck by hand). The mint would sporadically use specially made dies to strike carefully prepared round (or nearly so) planchets as presentation gifts or similar to royals, dignitaries, and such - these coins are informally called "Royals" for that reason.

Forget about that concept, though... has nothing to do with these normal milled pillar 8 Reales.

On a related note, I would also say to not to let what you read here skew or blend your memory of what you may have been told about this piece. After what I wrote, you're now bringing up the edging and that you sort of recall hearing that the edging was different than regular pillars, speculating that maybe that derives from it being a "Royal" (which as I explained is unrelated) and/or a different assayer... You MAY very well have been told something about the assayer being different (MF vs. just F), b/c it's the immediately obvious and notable difference... However, I would think it highly unlikely that your relative would have gone into any detail to you about relatively minute differences in the edge pattern that a non-coin person would know nothing of nor care anything about...

The security edge pattern (tulips or whatever they are) seen on yours IS essentially the same design used up through 1771 on the Mexican... the question is whether this slight variation we see here would be perfectly and absolutely correct for that first few year or two. Again, any discussion of this is just not something I see your great-great-grandcousin bothering to explain - that would really fall under the purview of relatively advanced numismatic analysis.

An observation on the edge you may have been told is that there WAS an edge design at all, as opposed to the immediately prior cob coinage (the transition occurred from 1732-34). Cobs were essentially just lumps with no edging... thus they were prone to losing some of their silver due to clipping (shaving some silver off off around the ends).

Realeswatcher
I have 10 1733's in my collection ( one being my avatar) and can vouch for the authenticity of 8 which are salvage pieces 1733 Mo F and 1733 MX F, all brought up from Coffins Patch Wreck by my friend Stefan Sekora. I had an additional MX but I sold it several years back.
The two 1733 Mo MF pieces are coins I bought from dealers years ago and while I believe they are real, the two pieces vary enough to make me wonder if one is not a counterfeit.
I would be happy to have my coins submitted to non damaging inspection by someone with an XRF machine to see what the trace metal make up is, and whoever has the "Fisher Pillars" could do the same.

In my humble opinion, the original poster's 1732 is a counterfeit, the "Fisher"coins posted by Realeswatcher are counterfeits including the 1732 example(which by the way does not match the Gilboy coins at all), and the original poster's 1733MX is a counterfeit as well. None of these coins match the lettering on an original and even though the location of the letters varies from die to die, the letters themselves would match. I would not pay good money for any of the pictured coins.

Bob, Fisher (apparently he alone?) "procured" the 1732 Mo MF (plus some 1732 Mo F - including the exact piece I posted a pic of here - plus 1733 dated specimens) back in the early 1970's. It seems like this scandal achieved some notoriety at the time... apparently Virgil Hancock wrote about it in The Numismatist. Read the cache of the "Mexican Coin Magic" web article I attached in the discussion on the other forum:

colonialcobs.com/forum/index.php?topic=125.0

scroll to the attachment "Fisher 1732MoMF.mht"..........

I don't have access to the pics right now (on the desktop, which is out of commission for a few more days), but last year I had randomly run across an eBay listing for what turned out to be the catalog for a Schulman auction which I believe is the one referred to in that article... the auction Fisher consigned (tried to consign) a few of these pieces to. The ad happened to show the pillars page, and as it included one of the 1732 Mo MF (along with a 1732 Mo F and a 1733 MX MF), these had to be the Fisher pieces in question. The article I mention indicates that Schulman withdrew the pieces from the auction (I guess after the catalog was printed) under pressure from Hancock and/or Clyde Hubbard. I want to say the auction was 1973? Somewhere around there... At any rate, these Fisher pieces were around since at least then (though probably not much longer than that!!).

Seeing that 1733 which was just posted... clearly it and the 1732 Mo MF he posted have notable physical/planchet similarities (odd pillars-side denticles, almost wire-rims) More interestingly, they have amazingly similar surfaces (tone, texture)... similar to the degree that they MUST have come out of the same exact batch, no? That alone pretty much damns them... no way two different genuine pieces would display such similar surfaces as non-wreck pieces after 280 years.

Again though, given that the 1732 posted definitely matches the die of the Fisher 1732 Mo MF, I really do wonder if these might not be "pre-treatment" versions of the "1733 Fleet" pieces Fisher was offering (and thus, somewhat historically notable numismatic forgeries).



You've alluded to this before... that's quite the claim. Of course, the Fisher outfit openly has used melted-down Atocha bars (and I would bet some slug coins) to make "official reproductions" (advertised as such)... but obviously trying to pass replicas as individual, original "discovered coins" would be bad. I would say this - IF something like this were done, even if they varied things up in terms of planchet shape and imparted design (let's say even hand-hammering hand-cut pieces using the original method), they would have to be very careful to limit the amount from each mold/die so no one would notice any pattern.