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 Replies: 100 / Views: 16,507 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
648 Posts |
Is this even possible [eBayItem]320872601775[/eBayItem]  seller has had 2 that I know of, both with counter stamps counter marks look genuine but the coin does not (to me) and the other one [eBayItem]320872601799[/eBayItem]  I did buy 3 off alloy (brass, silver wash) contemporary counterfeits from him at a good price .  they were labeled as such  Any opinions as to what these are?
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5362 Posts |
What we know is that Morelos did at times stamp 8Rs for use as emergency money. We know he or his followers cast some silver coins. But did he cast his own 8R coins for counterstamping? Did any of the other groups that counterstamped 8Rs?
We know that the host coin used here is consistent with the kind that would have been used for counterstamping.
The cast surfaces look like a fine grained sand was used to make the mold - which matches the techniques actually employed in the early 1820s when Morelos "replicas" ere first made.
In this case, the seller is one of the sellers I know and I know him to be good at spotting fakes.
So the question is actually do any REAL examples exist where a cast 8R is used as host for these stamps? There may be. I know the silver casts with the counterstamps are collected as if they were real by some Mexican specialists. -
But, personally, I suspect all examples are later reproductions made not for circulation but as momentos of some sort. The date of manufacture is anytome after 1809 and the material should be silver.
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
648 Posts |
Thank You swamperbob |
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
Both look like cast fakes
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Pillar of the Community
United States
648 Posts |
Thank You biggfredd Yes they do look/are cast fakes of 8reales. But if the counter stamp says someone is certifying that they have the proper silver content, and if the counter stamp is genuine, then would they have been accepted as legal tender back then? I do not think any one would have mistaken them for struck coins. So did they trust the counter stamp? |
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Pillar of the Community
France
1591 Posts |
Those coins may look like cast fakes, but that's actually the way some of them were made during the war of independence. It's not some cheap recent reproduction - as Bob said it was done back then. Here is for example a superb (for the type) cast 8 reales from the Chihuahua mint I bought 2 months ago - with complete history (use google translate if you don't read spanish) : http://www.sixbid.com/nav.php?p=vie...521&lot=1139Oh, I know this seller as well, he is an excellent and serious contact - which won't sell anything fake as genuine (unless he didn't noticed, but he is also good at that). Sometime his prices are a bit high to start with though (for an ebay auction - but they are often correct regarding the market value) :D |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
648 Posts |
Thank You MathieuMa As usual Here on the CCF it is a constant stretch of learning. Wow  what a history lesson . So if I have it right now  the cast coins were/are genuine issue (emergency) (per swamperbob very rare but possible maybe) counter stamped by José María Morelos. Who stamped those coins (hand made), and some of the struck coins (authorized by Spain) to finance the rebels (Heroes)one of wich was Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla from which we now have the Caballito Peso! Sorta Edited by tokenmast
03/21/2012 3:19 pm
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
3692 Posts |
He does say that they are cast.
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
Quote:
So did they trust the counter stamp? I've often wondered about that. If a counterstamp certified a coin, why do some have dozens? |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5362 Posts |
Counterstamps did different things at different times. In the War both sides counterstamped often over the stamp of the other side.
In general re-certification was the reason. Morelos often certified base metal copies like the SUD issues as "promissory" money to be redeemed at a later time in real silver.
In the case of early Mexican war issues early counterfeits are often collected alongside originals and in some cases are MORE valuable than originals.
Other c/s were done for revaluation to raise or lower a value.
At times they were done to make foreign coins pass at a token value - Bank of England coins for example or the early Philippines c/s coins.
The field is big and interesting but FULL OF FAKES. So be extra careful with coins of this type. Trust the dealer and confirm any return policy BEFORE bidding.
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Valued Member
Germany
194 Posts |
What we are seeing throughout this thread are coins produced by different sides of the Mexican War for Independence.
The coins that started the thread are Morelos issues. The Insurgents made coins from different sources of silver. They were working some mines under their control, they were using silver bars captured or confiscated from the Spanish, and they most likely used Spanish colonial coins and melted them down. The cast coins are usually made from sub-standard, i.e. debased silver.
While there are some local designs, for example the so-called SUD coinage, most of these coins are copies of the Spanish Colonial 8 reales. This was done in order to give them an "official" appearance (but not with the expectation to fool anybody). These casts were usually counterstamped to provide them with official approval, the Morelos stamp shown above being the most common. All of these ARE NOT COUNTERFEIT COINS but are considered regular emergency issues from the War for Independence. The issuers did not want to fool anybody.
The coin MathieuMa has posted, on the other hand, was made by the Royalists. When the mint in Chihuahua was put into work, they did not have any other means to produce coins but to make casts of existing coins and change the mintmark to CH for Chihuahua.
Unlike the coins of the insurgents, the Chihuahua isues are not debased, but they still are very crudely made, and here the people of Chihuahua complained about the quality and counterfeits that quickly turned up. This is why the two small counterstamps were applied at a later date at the mint to the coins deemed to be good.
So the counterstamps on all these coins were NOT APPLIED TO GUARANTEE THE FULL SILVER WEIGHT, but to identify these coins as officially accepted by the respective faction, even though everybody could see that they were nothing like the real Spanish 8 reales. And this is also the reason why we sometimes find several counterstamps from different factions.
Counterfeits of this series are made to defraud collectors. For very obvious reasons, any counterfeits that were produced at the times of the War for Independence would be difficult to tell from thw good ones. As a matter of fact, at least for the copper SUD coins, we can assume that contemporary counterfeits circulated along with regular issues, and were even counterstamped by Morelos to be accepted as good coins (remember, this was fiat money, the metal content and the fineness did not matter).
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Pillar of the Community
United States
648 Posts |
Thank You dosmundos History in coin coins in history Edit; for and Thank You swamperbob Edited by tokenmast
03/29/2012 9:20 pm
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Pillar of the Community
France
1591 Posts |
Yep, thank you both, as usual it's an excellent reading :)
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1962 Posts |
Good summary/differentiation of the two different types (Morelos/insurgent and Chihuahua)... Note the part:
"For very obvious reasons, any counterfeits that were produced at the times of the War for Independence would be difficult to tell from the good ones."
Particularly with the insurgent/Morelos types, it would also be hard, for that matter, to pick out more modern forgeries done in a similar method and "aged" skillfully... Being that the metallic content of the Morelos type casts is not fixed, and the likelihood that at least several different instances of production took place, undoubtedly with slight variation in technique... it hasn't seemed to me that there exists a perfectly typical "look" for the genuine casts that you can really use as a reference point on them... I think that the best bet in authenticating is to really focus on the counterstamps and whether they do indeed look "stamped" and not molded...
The Chihuahua pieces (again, observing casually) seem to have more of a "usual" look to them... I actually like the pieces where the earlier cast specimens were overstruck a few years later with new dies, leaving the new image over a usually strong remnant of the old...
Edited by realeswatcher
03/30/2012 6:07 pm
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Pillar of the Community
France
1591 Posts |
realeswatcher : do you have an example of Chihuahua overstruck piece to post ?
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Valued Member
Germany
194 Posts |
Here's another good one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/19066590664....m1423.l2649It is very obviously a cast coin, as can be seen from the pictures, and it is showing a double strike on the arc and the "SUD". This means that the model used to make the cast was a double-struck coin. That is, a coin with a striking error. A sub-standard coin (in the eyes of coin producers, not error collectors, of course). Now the big question is: was the person choosing this model an Insurgent from back in 1812, who had many coins at his hands and/or the time and, most of all, interest to prepare a model as close to perfection as possible? Or might it rather have been a counterfeiter of more recent times who did not have any other coin to choose from or simply did not bother? I'll leave it up to you to decide, but I sure have a very strong opinion on this one. |
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Replies: 100 / Views: 16,507 |
Posted 03/21/2012 02:28 am
