1766 Mexican 8 Real Coin With Some Curious Features

very interesting piece and great discussion !

the nightmare modern NF that bothers me (if it could be done without leaving traces): a high quality replica of a 1766 8R produced starting with an ugly or worn but authentic 8R host piece from the same period; SG and XRF would of course indicate it is a genuine piece; I hope this is virtually impossible to achieve; but when not done perfectly, al kinds of traces of the host coin could be expected

when the artifact was generated in 1776, which I like to agree with, it would be great to better understand what could be a plausible mechanism; first thing I would like to understand is the mirrored 1765

I really hope you can solve the mistery... I don't really like errors which have no clear explanation, although your coin seems legitimate for me. The 1765 date is in high relief? Law said that no valid coins should be melted, not restrike.

I just want to ask you about one point. Why do you all consider the observe of the coin the pillars side? The observe of the columnarios is the shield side, same as peinsular 8 reales. The pillars are the reverse. This point has always struck me :)

Regards and nice coin!

I have made another interesting discovery regarding 1766 "Mo" Mexican 8 Real pieces.
Aside from the inverted and raised "1765" date on the obverse (opposite the pillar face) of the coin in my posession there is also an area of excess metal. I have attached an image showing this.
The inverted and raised 1765 date is shown in the yellow rectangle.
The area of excess metal is shown in the red rectangle.
Note that other 1766 Mexican 8 Real coins also have this "excess metal" issue. This is shown on the web page at coins.sudokone.com/pages/study2.htm
The author mentions that "excess metal appears to have occurred during the striking process" and "the upper edge of the excess metal is finely serrated forming a perfect inverse of the denticles along the rim" and "the upper edge appears to have formed by a sticking process".

Note that for the coin in my possession the excess metal is finely serrated forming a perfect inverse of the denticles along the rim. Examination of the rim areas annotated by the small black arrows in the attached image shows that these serrations can be seen along the rim of the coin within the yellow and red rectangles, but not along the "normal" rim as defined by the light blue rectangle.
This indicates that the "raised inverse 1765 date (in the yellow rectangle)" and the "excess metal area (in the red rectangle)" have been generated by a single process.

Looks like there were some interesting happenings at the Mexican mint during 1766

Squire

Thanks for your interest realeswatcher
I find that the large part of the fun of collecting coins involves the historical sleuthing that I conduct during the lay-by period and after purchase.
This 1766 8 Real coin posed a riddle that I have found hard to resist and this contributed to my buying it.
The mental exercise of imagining how the inverted and raised numerals and letters on this coin and similar coins may have formed still has me scratching my head.
From your post I assume the ppm-inc is a reputable dealer so that is good news

As I am indeed a "captive audience member" I will keep investigating and will forward my findings to the CCF forum

Squire
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This is a very interesting coin, and quite the mystery as to how the mirrored 1765 came to be raised. Someone had indicated that the 6 in 1765 appears to have been repunched. As strong as that impression is, you would think you would see the top loop of the 6 if that were the case. To me, there appear to be raised remnants of other devices below the lower part of the 176 of the date, so I would offer that as an alternative to a repunched 6. I have no idea if that is true, or how one would explain it if it was.

...

Well during my first post I was a bit lazy so I decided to spend a little more time with this oddity. I may be wrong but having some experience with errors in the U.S. Colonial, U.S. Mint and Foreign markets there are some differences between colonial issue errors and U.S. Mint errors and sometimes things can be different and sometimes the rules a bit twisted. Following this thread there seems to be some errors on error definitions. When dies clashed the reulting images appear INCUSE or below the surface plain of the coin. In this case the transplated motifs are RAISED which then leads to a brockage possibility. When examining the images at Heritage and seeing the FULL COIN we do not see a partial brockage but we see a 100% brockage occuring IMO! For example we see in HISPAN the "R" of VTRAQUE. This appears as an "P" but this can't be ... its an "R" ... look closely. We see "*1766*" and we see in CAROLUS the Mexico City Mint and on the other side of the retrograde 1766. The question then is how did this occur? Somehow this coin received a FULL obverse brockage image on the reverse and was then struck again normally with reverse dies - possibly. Remember we see signs of a FULL obverse imaging 360* all around - some strong/some weak. With screw presses during this period we do not expect 100% transfer of ALL images all the time. A previous struck coin was probably STUCK on the reverse die - this coin then gets fed IN and receives a normal obverse strike from the upper hammer die and a brockage obverse impression from the first coin sitting on the reverse anvil die. So with the reduced force at this time for a screw press AND a two planchet scenario these images are SPORADIC - seen this before on U.S. Colonial Coin brockages. The die sinker discovers this and gives the coin a normal obverse/reverse impression at this time? No signs of a double impression on the obverse not even a die chatter appearance - so no coin rotation in the chamber so to speak. This then creates the underlying 360* brockage elements of the obverse seen on this specimen for its reverse side with the normal obverse impression. We then do an XRF assay and find it has trace aluminum ... just kidding. Interesting piece and controversial ...

P.S.: People still think that William Anton Mott Token Error is a fake - it could be? LOL.

John Lorenzo
Numismatist
United States