Numismatic Forgery 1776 8 Reales

My personal guess with the actual edge design issues lie in the areas circled in red; not to mention the obvious raised rim at the edge of the coin.

Some time ago I posted a series of edges for some 8R's I have. This is a later type but one which I believe to be genuine with the box & circle edge. It is NOT a Colonial Bust 8R. See pix below.

I have a number of these Portrait 8R's, usually after 1790, but unfortunately only the Mexico & Potosi mints for which I can photograph the edges & post them if desired.

Gallienus I would like to add to jgenn's request.

First I would ask that you find both overlaps and photograph them with the same face of the coin showing in both photos so that orientation on the coin can be accurately positioned. These pictures should focus on the center of the overlap with it positioned perpendicular to the plane of the photo (to minimize distortion). See sketch:


Second I would like to see at higher resolution portions of the edge that show "cut like" marks that cross the segments. I would love to see a complete series of the edge of the coin if possible to gauge the extent of these marks.

Oh, I did have another question for this thread. A coin company released a newletter on the "Rare Coin Industry". It's primarily USA coins, however, one of their 5 featured coin pix includes the following.



Before I make any statements I wanted to get peoples' opinion on this piece? I don't have any other pix and again this is not a piece that I own. Thus no weights or reverse [or edge] pix are possible. The lettering alignment for "Dei Gratia" does not match any Mo 8R's of 1807 I could find. I only checked Mexico mint, not any of the others.

Hi Swamper,

Thanks very much for your comments on the CAR 1824-NG 8R. It will be hard as today almost all the Republicans I see are slabbed but one can see the edges in the newer slabs. The auction firms usually only have high grade specimens. Some auction firms may let me photograph the edges.

I'm also a member of the ANS and I've been corresponding with them about visiting their collection in NY. They'll almost certainly ? let me photograph the edges & I'll definitely contact you when I have the trip schedule in hand.

I do have your book, quite interesting and am reading through it now. Quite useful although I must confess that I don't specialize in Colonial pieces, only Republican or literally Post Wars of Independence issues. For Brazil tho, I go back to 1694.

Gallienus The 1807 coin you pictured does not have enough data to form an opinion. The smile that you point out would be incorrect for Mexico City but NOT for Lima. In addition the damage to the field in front of the King's portrait could have caused damage to the smile.

Now regarding your comment -


You need to understand that the positioning of the letters is not something you can use to identify a counterfeit. The reason is because each letter was punched into the die ONE letter at a time. The punches used to make the dies were single letters. So every die may be different.

This does not mean studying the letters and numbers is not useful. What is critical is the designs of the individual letters. For example, some numbers vary mint to mint. So all Mexico City dies that use a 6 have to use a Mexico City 6. Lima uses a slightly different 6.

The best way to decide for yourself is to take the time to create your own alphabet for each mint you are interested in. The best way to do that is to start out with 10-20 different high grade certified coins using each different number. Copy the largest pictures of each coin that you can and then excise the numbers from each of the coins and rotate them to an upright position for comparison. It is my presumption that if I can find 10 identical number 1's on different coins dated in any given year - I have found the "standard" for that year.

Doing this year by year for each letter and number can be tedious, but you will learn to see what is the right shape and more easily identify the wrong shape.

The punch shapes were only changed when an entire matrix punch block (master block) was changed. This did not happen that often. Branch mints (in the case of Mexico) often manufactured their own punches at first before they received a standard block.

An exception in shape could occur in the event of a chipped die - but the difference must make sense. If however, the shape of a particular 6 was NEVER used at a given mint - and no possible break could account for the difference - you have a likely counterfeit.

Chips can be very helpful to confirm genuine standard shapes and to identify chips and splits associated with counterfeiters.

The differences are often very subtile so keep an open mind until you have become totally familiar with the range o shapes.

The numbers tend to show the most variation in basic shape.

Another thing to consider is that in some cases the same letter is used more than once on the same die. On a Carolus coin the ordinal I appears on the obverse die 5 or 6 times, the A appears 3 times and the R appears twice. Each of these letters should be the same on all dies.

Note that the S in CAROLUS at Mexico City is often slightly shorter in height than looks correct.

The reason I no longer post copies of my matrix design solutions is that everyone really needs to learn for him/her self. Using my results could be misleading since the subtilties are often not at first apparent and I never included a detailed description of the tiny differences.