1799 8 Reales Coin With Lots Of Counterstamps

The counterstamps are more interesting than the coin!

Those counterstamps are chopmarks. The coins were heavily used in Asia, and merchants would put their mark on the ones they thought were genuine silver. Some coins are full of chopmarks.

And yes, to some degree the worn ones are more interesting with chopmarks.

Merged topics.

Thanks again everyone! I am still trying to get a feel for navigating this wonderful site so please bear with me. It is quite a privilege to be able to access so many experts!Is there a better place to ask more questions about the chopmarks and what they could mean? I am most interested in seeing if I can patch together some type of history of this coin's travels.

I have a few chopped coins 1782 8R, and the scatterdness of the chops like in the original post is the norm that I have seen.

One of the earliest articles on Chop marks appeared in a French Numismatic journal from 1905. The author traced the origin of chopping coins to the appearance of Counterfeit copies of Charles IIII 8Rs in China as a result of a war between Spain and England that commenced in 1796. The manufacture of counterfeits took place in Birmingham, England and several different manufacturing techniques were involved. The best of these counterfeits were made using Sheffield Plate which was a copper core coin with silver layers fused to the outside which could be struck as a unit. The three layers deformed as if they were solid metal and detection was initially achieved by cutting the coin surface deep enough to expose the copper.

When 8 reales were imported to China in the late 1700s and early 1800s a special class of professional authenticators determined their value. These were the Schroffs. Before 1835 they relied on weight, size, color and appearance to judge silver content. But these Sheffield plate copies passed these tests. So because they were aware of the fact that counterfeits were appearing in general circulation when the coins were melted to make Saycee ingots, the Schroffs decided that cutting the surfaces with punches would do the same thing. It worked very well for some of the coins with thin plates and those that were improperly fused but thick plates that were well fused were often missed.

In 1826 a second article this one appearing in the English numismatic press carried the account of an 8R that had been chopped over 100 times without being exposed as the counterfeit it actually was.

As the general business community discovered that copper core coins were still circulating they started to adopt the practice of chopping. Some of the symbol's are interpreted as having individual meanings attributable to specific businessmen. Not all are however.

In about 1835 the Schroff's themselves were introduced to the used of density measurements to detect the thick Sheffield plate coins. The British were responsible for that revelation but it was a self serving deception because the English did it to protect their own monetary supply which was being overcome by Chinese manufactured copies of Spanish 8Rs. They did not mind shipping fraudulent coins to China but they didn't want them returned.

So after that date (1835) the Schroffs stopped chopping coins for initial identification because density worked better but the practice of Chopping continued among private businessmen.

Chopping is also used by forgers to obscure problem areas on their forgeries so NEVER ASSUME that chops prove a coin is genuine.

That said the coin that appears at the start of this thread does look like a genuine coin. I would still suggest the density test just to be sure it is really silver of the correct alloy.

A density test using a 1/100th gram scale will be capable of detecting all Sheffield plate coins. It will however not detect the English counterfeits from the post 1820 period because they were made with 850 fine silver. Density tests will detect coins using 800 fine silver or lower.

jgenn, on that Great Collections piece:

I see what you're thinking with the toning (kind of that "flat" tone overall but with cruddy black color around the devices)... however, particularly on the obverse, it kind of has the look of worn off/smeared-into-the-crevices ink chop. Overall, I'd accept it as Chinese hoard patina WITHOUT the oft-seen dip & strip or polish job. And as for the "actual" chops... sure, certainly similar to what you see on some of the modern Chinese fakes, but remember, those are just copied from what's found on "genuine" pieces (be they original regals or Bob's "Class 2").

Aside from that, also see where the flatness center shield and mushy rim look suspicious like some of the fakes... but there's a fine line in distinguishing that EXACT look from weaknesses/flaws found on "genuine" (regal or Class 2) pieces.

So I see a "genuine" (i.e., not modern fake) piece. Now, is it original regal OR Class 2? As discussed in that other thread, it's plausible that the keyhole window could have been copied over to "Class 2" restrikes - I just see enough evidence that the feature ORIGINALLY appeared on regal pieces.

FWIW... shown below are two examples of purported 1789 "Charles IV" Mexico 8R that were sold several years back by a ring of Chinese sellers (discussed on CoinComm. several times, Bob is familiar - some with silly names like "walmartcoinstore", etc.) that was offering mostly fakes... OR really, often "superfakes"... especially many of the dangerous German thaler types, the Gothic Brit. crown, etc. Some months back, I went crawling through Worthpoint archives to dig up as many of those listings as I could (I had saved some pics, IDs, listing pages back then... Worthpoint doesn't show user IDs (at least in free version), but I could tell those listings by the type of photos used, description language, unique style of the title, etc.

At the time, amongst their high-grade, usual suspect German thaler fakes... they listed a number of portrait 8R which to the naked eye LOOK genuine. A few weren't as good and were either obviously fake and/or matched previously observed modern Chinese fakes... but then there were pieces like this which, gun to my head, I would say are "genuine" (again, whether Regal or Class 2 - but not modern fake).

These are both "Charles IV" legend, keyhole window, each with a variety of chops. Neither obverse nor reverse die appear to match on either piece. Also cropped the GC piece's pics and inserted for comparison: