Americas First Silver Dollar 1783 Found On Shipwreck Off LA

They appear to be from the wreck of The El Cazador. It was a Spanish Brig that was tasked with delivering 450,000 reales coins to New Orleans to bail out King Carlos III of Spain's faltering economy in their colony there. The ship loaded itself with silver from Mexico, sail from Veracruz and was never heard from again.

As a consequence, Spain could not financially save their colony there and was force to return the land to France. Napoleon needed cash to finance his conquests in Europe and offered the land to the US, it became the Louisiana Purchase.
It is said that without the loss of the El Cazador, the US would not be as it is today.

Hopefully, they have a COA connecting them to the wreck. Otherwise they lose the value of that additional provenance.
These appear to be in good shape for having spent 200 years at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Much of the recovered silver was unrecognizable. A COA will make all the difference in value.

The fact that the text pictured doesn't mention a specific ship would make me suspicious. Yes, shipwreck coins have a certain allure/value, but it's not like they wouldn't know which ship, or am I wrong? Seems like a marketing gimmick. Best to go with market value of a reale in that date/condition without the shipwreck stuff I think.

I want one

I'd accept the earlier packaging as definitive - just because NGC has slabbed examples in recent years doesn't render that the only acceptable proof of provenance. In fact, any 1783 with shipwreck effect appearance, unless an out and out fake, can hardly be anything else. And the value doesn't skew that much higher regardless.

I've bid on a few of the NGC slabbed, El Cazedor pieces. I've seen the prices realized swing by 50% or more over the non-slabbed ones. While I've never been a big fan of provenance, this is one coin I'd only buy as certified. A cardboard holder looks nice, but ... I guess it all boils down to collector preference.

Years ago I saw the treasure of the El Cazador displayed at the old New Orleans Mint. They had a solid stack of coins, mostly these eight reales, that would fill a coffin. The treasure mainly consisted of 1783 and 1784 Mexico Eight Reales of Charles III. The sea was not kind to these coins, so I wonder if the certificate which says they weight 27 grams means these particular coins do, or whether it more likely means the coins ought to weight 27 grams. If you weight them and find they are significantly underweight compared to issue, you have an idea of the degree of environmental damage these coins have suffered. Now the numbers of coins on just this one ship represented a loss of about one third of the entire emission of those particular dates. With regard to colonial coins having more than one thousand examples would be deemed "common." Tens of thousands of El Cazador pieces of eight being dumped on the market at the same time both raises historical interest and drops the resale value of any coins you purchase, so long as any of the hoard remain for sale at the original price from the original source. Usually once all the hoard coins are sold, do they begin to rise in price, long term. The value of these particular coins is through their connection to the El Cazador, more so than any numismatic rarity.

Now if your intent is to find out about the first silver dollars used in America, if you start "America" at the end of the Revolution in 1783, and ignore about 250 years of colonial existence, then these El Cazador coins were intended to be used in the newly free America, but just missed landing on dry land. I would look for a non-sea salvage piece-of-eight of cob-style (Mexico, Peru, or Seville), pillar-style or the first twenty years of portrait-style Spanish Colonial Dollars (prior to 1781) to hold a dollar that might have been present in commerce at the beginning of America.

Welcome Dixieprep,

Sorry about your Fathers passing.

Those are neat set of coins. I have a 1785 2 reales the quarter size from the Mexico City mint. I have had it many years. I have no idea where it was found. They are cool coins