Santiago 8 Reales 1768 Columnario- Unfortunately A Fake

As you may know Robert Gurney, Gord Nichols and myself for the last 4-5 years have been working on a ANS book for the Contemporary Counterfeit Portrait 8 Reales - due out late 2014/early 2015 based on the current schedule. Along the way I have come to realize that contemporary counterfeits of this type are VERY RARE for all mints. In the last C4 Ringo Stacks sale he owned JUST one and I own just one - although I do not hunt them down but simply do not see them being sold very often. I can't remember the exact composition (XRF verified) of my specimen but it showed good platinum & gold (i.e., levels between 0.1-1.0%) suggesting it was silver of this period (18thC) but the silver was debased and copper was in the alloy in place of the lower Ag content. In other words a well made example of the period. Most seem underweight but at times lead is sometimes added to bring the weight near 26.5 grams. It seems to be a type not counterfeited very often - and I say that with the assumption here not to include any of the obvious modern types that specialist know are bad an arm's length away. Would like to analyze these pieces for their assays if you come across any others in the near future.

John Lorenzo
United States

Boy... the more I compare this to other pieces known... a bit more worn, but really looks pretty decent. Even what can be seen of the deeply engraved edge pattern looks proper. IF it's fake, it is sophisticated numismatic forgery (which of course the value would certainly invite)... this is no Chinese job.

By the way, if you're willing to share (I can't find this piece in archives), what auctioneer was (maybe?) fooled by this piece? Had to be major to handle something like this, I would guess...

From the site I stupidly neglected to notice something on this very evening...
http://coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleN...&lotNo=50890

HMMM ... in VNUM is that an upside down A punch where the cross bar was not completely polished off for this counterfeit obverse die or just a strange/awkward place for a die crack? Again the composition would tell if modern or of the period but this is not modern. Unfortunatley more research is needed with SEM/EDS to see if a piece has been made with melted silver where Pb values decrease below the normal levels seen in the regals for the period in question. Also the microstructure could give indications of remelting if the Au & Pt levels appear normal (i.e., 0.1-1.0% generally) and Ag ~ 90% even for this type. I was looking at the remelting issue for the 1733/1734 Felipe V 8R Cob Klippe pieces. Chinese pieces based on past research of the 20thC are Fe/Ni or German silver (Cu/Zn/Ni) predominantly and would have been spotted immediately as realeswatcher alluded to in a previous post. My point to realeswatcher is that there has yet to be a study to confirm if a piece has been made with pieces of good 8R melted silver of the period - its microstructure other than lower lead levels or how this would look at 500X magnification with a SEM device still needs to be researched & developed ... I am thinking about it ... I have yet to own a 1733/34 Klippe called real for this type of evaluation ... some people have speculated most these issues are fakes anyway ... I do own three contemporaries of this issue all with different alloys ...

John, about the VNUM on this piece... those are die cracks. The originals I'm seeing have similar die cracks all over the pillars side, including that extra metal blob on the right pillar. The die was clearing deteriorated.

As to the age of this piece... It's either a genuine/regal piece, OR a much later NUMISMATIC forgery. Logic dictates that - there just weren't enough originals produced to justify a contemporary fake being produced... and again, it wouldn't be this faithful to the original. It wouldn't necessarily be "modern" (like, say, last 15 years from China), but maybe late 1800's to mid-1900's?

Looking at the Heritage hi-res pics (which are much clearer)... the surfaces don't look great up close like that... sort of reminiscent of a cast? But, you could argue that porosity could be remaining from cleaned-off environmental impacts?

What do we think of that mark on the P of HISPAN?

Kind of off in a different direction with the Klippes... I still think those many of those Klippe fakes you've brought up are generally later pieces. They certainly do emanate from Mexico, though... so it's ENTIRELY conceivable they could have been made with old coinage that would show proper trace elements... and maybe "some" could be early? On this topic, was searching something recently which led me to a thread on another forum where the poster discusses how his grandfather found a stash of fake "cobbs" in the late 1940's... he believes that they were silver (from what he himself can tell, and he's had a few other reales collectors look at what he has) and seems to think the stash may be about 100 years old.
cointalk.com/threads/mexico-silver-brass.195958

The poster mentions most were sold in a family financial crisis, but his grandfather kept a single example, and it is along the lines of the pieces you've been looking at:

It seems so that these three fake Klippes are late 19thC/early 20thC production pieces based on the alloy compositions. They all had good Pt & Au levels but we talked about this already - I am ready to analyze some of the so called real Klippes.

The remelting aspect would just require a good sample size and time with SEM/EDS - reserved for a later researcher. I am no longer at EDAX and currently only have limited SEM/EDS usage with another employee needing to do the analysis in my new company (Kearfott).

Very interesting post.

The coin looks REAL (Genuine) on initial review. Initially I wondered what the basis of claiming forgery was for NGC?

But I looked at the coin NOT as a Santiago issue (which I know very little about) but instead I looked to see if the way it was made left fingerprints.

The dies that made the original impression clearly were made with a punch set. But many features have been reworked as if the die sinker was not very good. My overall impression was that this is NOT an engraved die.

The rarity of the mint should preclude a contemporary counterfeit that is made this well. That is not 100% certain but VERY high odds exist against that possibility.

So, I agree that we face only two reasonably possible results Genuine or Numismatic Forgery.

As the coin presently appears, there is obvious surface corrosion that looks VERY good to me. This is both good and bad because forgers often cover their work by using acid to erase traces of their work. It also is the reason for the NCS/NGC involvement.

There are no edge photographs available so I have no comment there. Too bad I would like to see if the surfaces are consistent all around.

I noticed there are genuine looking die cracks and die erosion traces. This is the best place to hunt for evidence that occurs in modern transfer dies that does not appear on a genuine coin.

When cracks are TRANSFERRED in the case of a numismatic forgery they often lose the sharpness of the original steel breaks. I focused there and noticed some evidence of possible transfer. But I could not enlarge the photos clearly enough 200X or higher. Not conclusive.

Next I looked at die erosion effects for what I would call erosion on top of erosion.

I think I have found a good spot to look at:





Notice what looks like a J or a closed loop under the notch in the N. Also note in the center of the letter itself an odd looking surface area (like a fill effect) to "cover a void".

I enlarged the area further and I believe this is the first of many fingerprints of an excellent transfer die forgery. I suspect a collapsed bubble made in the process of a liquid matrix (plastic cast) transfer process. Could be wrong but I do not think so.





In this case, I would concur with rejection based on the appearance of the coin as a probable image transfer.

For the experts in this mint - is the host coin (less the corrosion) known to exist? It is rare enough that it should be.

Heritage, Cayon, Goldberg...

Unfortunately when there is a potential for profit to be made the same forgeries will crop up again and again.

Cast or struck - the fact that the image is a transfer made using a wet process is fairly conclusive.