Segovian Mint. The "Real Ingenio"

Hello, a few days ago, I promised @1c5d7n5m to open a new post to discuss about Segovian Mint, the crown jewel of all Spanish numismatics.

While any other mints were coining cobs, Spanish Royal Family commissioned a factory in Tyrol the stuff needed to mint coins with roller dies. The machinery arrived in Segovia in 1580, in the largest industrial convoy ever seen in Europe.

From its foundation until 1665, the 'Real Ingenio' coexisted with another mint, called 'La Casa Vieja' (The Old House), which used manual technology to make cobs, similar to those of the rest of the peninsular and colonial mints, but there were two different factories.

You can expand information on this link, it is difficult for me to write a long text in English because it is not my native language

http://www.segoviamint.org/english/history.htm

There were minted with roller dies pieces of copper (maravedis), silver (reales) and gold (escudos). While maravedis are easy to find, silver is a bit more difficult and Segovian gold is so rare (and expensive).

At a time when the coins of Spain and its colonies were extremely poor quality, the Segovian pieces were so attractive because of roller dies technology. They are considered by most of Spanish collectors as the most beautiful coins ever minted in Spain. You have to take into account that we are talking about some coetaneous pieces to the cobs, a century and a half before they began to mint the pillar dollars.



Segovian Roller dies
Now I'm showing you a 8 reales piece minted in 1630, this is mine. I only have this one from Segovian mint, I've asked some friends, to show you a few more examples.





All coins coming from roller dies are a bit warped... and if you somehow find a totally plane one, it's probably a counterfeit :)





The edge is completely flat, they minted a whole strip of coins, and then they cut out the flans with another machine, called torculadora (in Spanish)


This is my coin


This is a strip of 2 reales coins without cutting

I hope you have learned something new today, if you want to ask or add something, please do it.

Kind regards (and again, sorry for my English)