Comments On This Cast Klippe Mexican Piece

The problem now is were these cast in 1773/1734 or in 1900? Have not seen any information to assist in this matter other than historical accounts. No scientific analyses. Specifically - P.T. Craddock in his new book Scientific Investigations of Copies, Fakes and Forgeries recommends that trace gold is an excellent indicator of a piece as genuine or a forgery. He states gold in post medieval period is about 0.05% and it dropped to 0.01% generally in the 19thC. Gold was present here but you can argue the cast pieces analyzed by myself giving XRF readings between 55-81% silver used genuine remelted reales in a cast operation probably due to a lack of a strking press. I have not seen a SEM/EDS type analyses in a comparison of cast silver pieces from the 18thC & 20thC or from an earlier to a later period performed by an investigator? I also have not analyzed by XRF a genuine Klippe. This answer can not be reasonably answered by compositional analyses. The microstructure of an 18thC cast compared to 20thC may provide some answers but again I have never seen casts of this nature using legitimate reales as the coining source so all the trace elements such as gold, indium and iridium are present as noted in Craddock (page 388). One possibility would be to do lead isotopic analysis of say a Chihuahua cast piece and compare these results but would this authenticated cast piece of the early 1800's serve as a good fingerprint to compare to these earlier? Klippe pieces of 1733/1734? For now we remain in 1900 ... with more questions.

John Lorenzo
United States

Nothing historically supports it (cast pieces) ... only scientific analysis can change it ... if necessary?