Need A Bit Of Help With Half An 8 Reales

What a fantastic coin find. It appears possibly to be a counterfeit 8 reales that someone cut down to 4 reales (common practice for making small change in the early 1800's) and discovered "oops, not real". Based on the design of the coin (plated base metal core) it may date from the mid 1800's, I will leave the details of the possible time of manufacture to Swamperbob.

The coin is definitely a Sheffield plate copy. A very good example of one that shows the nature of the forgery. Based on the quality of the remaining detail, this was likely a product of Birmingham, England. That was one of few places that rose to this standard of die making.

The coin is struck and was cut to make change exposing the fraud. I am a bit surprised that the silver coating was not rendered for its silver content. In the first half of the 19th century that would have been worth doing.

Unfortunately without the date, it would take a bit of research to see if it matches any of the Charles III Mo FM varieties we have documented. If no match is possible the date will be uncertain until a complete copy is found.

This is clearly an early counterfeit and a great teaching piece but without a date is unlikely to be terrifically valuable. These coins were made from about 1790 to 1830 for use in the colonies of North America and elsewhere.

Initially they were exported to China as a War effort against Spain, but that had failed by about 1796. After that they were used in backwater areas.

The question to ask yourself is - if this coin was intact could you spot the fact it was fake?

Many experts and most dealers CAN NOT.

One thing I had forgotten to mention - did you notice the edge die was made with a two segment punch? Each pair of segments along the edge is positioned in a unique orientation. They were punched into the edge die two segments per punch.

In the view as presented, each circle is joined firmly to the adjacent rectangle along the RIGHT side of the circle but the gap on the left side varies in width. This two segment punch is seen VERY often on the later well made silver restrikes and in my opinion links the silver Counterfeits to Birmingham. This of course makes perfect sense since who better to supply the Canton factories that the English themselves?

So if you have a coin with CORRECT density 10.31 that appears to be solid silver 900 fine CHECK FOR THIS edge pattern. If you have it, you have a proven Class 2 forgery.

Not necessarily. The Bank of England stamp is seen on some but by NO MEANS ALL Birmingham types. The forgery (Birmingham) first came to my attention years ago through a bogus BoE coin but recently the unmarked types have been coming out of the woodwork or so it seems. I think I am just getting more adept at spotting the tell-tale signs on uncut examples. I no longer need the stamp to draw my attention to the coin. It is unfortunate that so many I see are priced in the $200 plus range. I do not need a bunch of real 8Rs cluttering up my office and consuming my resources. So I bid only when I am almost positive a coin is fake. That means I pass up a lot of likely fakes just because of cost.

I will try to sum up what I see as the case.

It is true that the majority of counterfeit coins that have the BofE stamp are of Birmingham origin. But at the same time the majority of 8Rs from Birmingham are NOT stamped.

colonialjohn, nice write up!

I really like you coin, espcially with the S chop mark in front of the mouth with a hit that makes it look like the king is smoking a pipe.