Iturbide 8 Reales - 1822 - Mexico

Yes, both are quite visible, I like those features as well :)
It was a good idea to change that eagle later, it was ridiculous (as you said ... chicken :p)

Now, let's the hunt for the last south american duro I'm looking for continue : the 1 peso volcano from Chile.

Gosh, how is that even possible :(

That one was less expensive, but there was at least at 1000+ star bidder on it :
http://www.ebay.es/itm/BONITA-Y-RAR...t_500wt_1255

I totally forgot this coin could interest anyone, as a contemporary counterfeit (modern ones are nice to see, but not as interesting)
Something else can happen as well : the seller have a friend making bids to make the prices go higher (I saw that once with the seller - but the guy was so stupid he used a new accounts, with only votes from some of his items sold at 1€ ...)

Oh, the one I posted is back to auction : http://www.ebay.es/itm/ws/eBayISAPI...t_500wt_1255

Please share your though / pictures of this coin once you have it in hand - it will be a very pleasant and interesting reading as usual ! :)

You know, Bob, considering in part how the market for genuine Iturbide 8R has pushed up over the past few years (you follow ebay closely - have you noticed what even dreck pcs. go for?)... I bet that properly advertised in the right venue, this might actually be worth closer to the initial hammer price you two pushed up to. As you said, there were probably fewer of these made in terms of proportion to the amount of originals than for standard Colonial portrait 8R or the Cap & Ray 8R. So, you end up with a very low net amount of extant examples... and I would think that all of you contemporary forgery Reales collectors out there would have a definite interest in such pieces. Keep in mind, it IS the warmer weather now, the piece wasn't identified as what it was... certainly not all the usual suspects would have been in play on this piece, I would think.

If this is indeed a legit period piece, I don't think $250 should be hard to swallow at all for the true specialist.

That logic makes sense, and I think that probably reflects something you would guess to be the case (even if you had no specific knowledge about it) - most of you specialists collecting contemporary forgery "Spanish" coinage are not Latin America-based (or more specifically here, not Mexican)... Namely, we're talking Americans who do either the "two bits", the portrait "piece of eight", or the Cap & Ray "Mexican Dollar" due to those series' roles in American coinage.

So yes, Iturbide pieces could understandably be ignored by the hardcore (American) specialists, since those coins played no significant role in U.S. coinage (and those are the people who would really drive the prices up)... I would still think, however, that you might be able to piece together enough attention from collectors of various series/types/themes who may have a tangent interest in contemporary forgeries to make a little bit of a market for these:

-- (as you said) someone trying to assemble a type set of Contemporary 8R forgeries... this might be a subset to someone who accumulates all types of the Spanish 8 Reales or "peso"
-- people who specialize in the Iturbide series (the short time frame lends itself well to that)
-- collectors of strictly MEXICAN coins (as opposed to all/many mints of the Spanish Colonial era)... there are some out there (I know we've seen at least a few here in the World forum)
-- maybe some people would latch these on to the end of the Colonial Portrait series due to similar appearance/design? (that might be a stretch)




That's true... though perhaps with more years of universally accessible digital information, and as more people sell grandpa's old stash on ebay rather than to the local yokel coin dealer, more info on these and/or actual specimens will continue to be ferreted out and this could help gradually foster such interest. I'm sure, btw, that squeezing a section on these into one of your potential books could help in this regard. I guess they might fit most neatly with the Cap & Rays as they both are in the parent category of "Post-Colonial Mexico 8 Reales"? That's how Riddell presents it.

As you know, it's amazing how published info on a numismatic topic tends to bring related info/specimens out of the woodwork. I know of one example where, not long after a book on a specific topic of Latin numismatics was published several years ago, 1) a specimen that was previously unknown to the market was presented to the author, further evidencing something the book pointed out, and 2) a rare, previously unknown pattern coin of this era randomly emerged - completely unrelated and coincidental to the book - which was then presented at auction properly attributed and explained by the author's research.

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PS - I was curious, so I did a little digging b4 submitting this post... The guy who initially outbid you and won is based in Mexico and appears to be a fairly serious accumulator of many different types of Mexican numismatics. From a quick look, this actually looks to be the only contemp. counterfeit I see him bothering with. He apparently bid on it from the "collector of Mexican coinage" perspective, not as someone solely focused on counterfeits.

ROTFL : Chinese counterfeiters counterfeiting counterfeits to dupe counterfeit collectors :D

Ahh, the chicken eagle. There is a growing body of thought that the "chicken eagle" of some of the Iturbide series and the first coinage of the Supreme Junta Zitacuaro is not an eagle at all.

Max Keech, in his most excellent article in the the March 2012 issue of the US Mexican Numismatic Association magazine, establishes the bird is a Crested Caracara.

He references the Codex Mendoza and Teocalli de la guerra sagrada to support the point. These birds are Caracaras.

Did the Spanish invent the eagle with snake symbolism?