Help Identify/ Authenticate This Mexican Coin

An 8 escudo would be gold so I'm assuming this is probably a Counterfeit. Any body else have an idea?

I doubt we will ever know, but what is the weight?

keepcalmandcoinon What you have is probably a contemporary circulating counterfeit 1 Reale. Based on appearance it is second republic and perhaps Guanajuato. These copper counterfeits are very common and without a date it is of little value. The context of where it was located may be of more interest than the coin itself. These were locally produced and did not tend to get outside of Mexico. A large number of these have been on the market since the 1990s the result of a discovery of a disposal area being discovered. Found in a dump associated with a silver refinery ruin (on Federal lands) - the hoard of counterfeits were chemically treated (about 1910-15) to remove the silver electroplate. The leftover copper cores were buried in metal barrels and other containers to dispose of them.

The second possibility would be a button. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century buttons resembling coins were in fashion. I would look for a trace of a loop being removed. Replica one reale sized buttons are known but are not as common as the two reales size. This might bring more money in a sale if there was conclusive proof it had been used as a button.