1818 1/2r Texas Jolas

There isn't much of a paper trail for these issues. They were considered Mexican local / municipal coins. In my humble opinion they are not more than tokens, but somebody at some point entered them in a coin catalog, and so they became "official". I have been discussing with Mexican numismatists at several occasions why some of these coins ended up in catalogs like Krause, and others are only found publications on tokens or municipal coins, but there is no clear consensus.

The Texas jolas are equally, if not less, rare as other local coins, but they were born on what would later turn out to be the "right side of the border". Somebody pointed out that they should be considered US money, in line with the issues from the Eastern Colonies, and wooosh! they became highly priced numismatic items. And, even better, some of them have a Texas Lone Star on them (add 20-30,000 bucks extra for that!)

As I understand it, most existing coins today are from one or two lokal hoards. Having been in the ground for decades, these items had to be expertly restored, which might explain their rather artifical look. The article in the Numismatist mentioned in the auction lot description is a great read and also explains why they have been "popping up" in recent years.

John, I think I have a scan of the article somewhere, if you are interested.

Some people believe DOS MUNDOS these are all FAKES ... some people ... <VBG>

The Material Analysis study and final conclusions are very interesting <VVBG>.

Dos Mundos did you notice the extra <V>.

Yes - you are on the correct wavelength.

They did an XRF study on these pieces and some geologists (yes they were geologists or scientist in some testing lab) confirmed the copper was of this region and/or striking period.

To the best of my understanding no other study like this has been performed in which you look at the metal alloy XRF assay and then confirm that origin has been determined other than on simple already known tracked ancient coins where you know that was the mint - the only mint say within 1000 miles of that silver mine for these ancient tetradrachms <BG>.

Only now are scientists starting to develop multiple testing apparatuses to confirm WHAT KIND OF manaufacturing process struck a coin - say in 1815 let alone to prove origin from a simple XRF assay. This is with microstructure analysis and not XRF assays.

I will admit you can STRONGLY SUGGEST the alloy is not modern from an XRF study as I have reported here with these modern Fe/Ni or German Silver (Cu/Zn/Ni) modern Chinese fakes.

A dealer friend of mine about a year ago supplied me cast coins from a demonstration made in a lab in which the demonstrator knew the components of the cast and made it to an EXACT match of a George II cast contemporary counterfeit.I confirmed in my lab. PERFECT MATCH. Its true Dos Mundos that a cast is EASIER to fake than a struck coin ... remember ... no mint records or drawings of these pieces for the obverse and reverse ... no PROOF the coins were actually struck but they DISCUSSED the NEED for them in a found proposal ... and then these were dug many years later in Texas ...

In my mind if you could CONFIRM a texas Jola was not part of this dug hoard say you know by pedigree it came from this Mint or was acquired by some noted individual and then COMPARE these to the Texas DUG HOARD find using MICROSTRUCTURE analysis and not a SIMPLE XRF assay then you have SHOWN some vailidty ... where in this scenario CURRENTLY is your CONFIRMED MINT STANDARD?

JPL