8R. M. 1865.f.h.10-D Is It Real Republica Mexican

The coins you are describing are Mexican 8 Reales referred to as "Cap and Ray style". The second one is a common date. The 8R stands for "8 Reales" (coins were minted in 8, 4, 2 ,1 reale denominations), The "Go" is the mintmark for Guanajuato (a major silver mining area in Mexico), "1877" the date, "FR" is the assayer in charge of the mint, "10Ds 20Gs" is the % of the coin that is silver. (12 Dineros means pure silver and there are 24 granos in a dinero so "10 dineros, 20 granos is (10 20/24)/12=.9027 so the coin is 90+% silver) The first one is either fake or you incorrectly identified the markings. There was no "M" mintmark, there was an "M" with a small o above the "M" (mint mark for Mexico City) but no Cap and Ray 8 reales were minted there in 1865. Very few mints produced Cap and Ray coins in 1865 because at that time in Mexico's history, Emperor Maximillian was in control. Please try and post a photo of the coins, we would all like to see them.

Boy that coin is going to make SwamperBob drool. He collects fake 8 reales and that is a beauty.

The 1865 Mo in brass is a well known counterfeit. They were produced from transfer dies made with a real host coin that was NOT dated 1865. The dies were redated to create a non-existent combination.

If you look at the details of this coin - the edges of the rays and the last digit of the date - they simply do not look correct. The rays become ragged as a result of the transfer process.

This coin and others that are very similar to this one have appeared many times on ebay and in auction catalogs. It is often portrayed as a "pattern" strike.

It is a fairly valuable counterfeit based on the notariety of the date/assayer combination. However, intrinsically it is a typical member of the brass transfer die strike category. It is likely to be the ONLY one of the group that sells for over $50 to most counterfeit collectors.

Hello and thank you for clearing this up for me. Sadly I think the value, to a collector, of both coins is lessened even more by the soft soldering on the back of both coins, that enabled them to be worn by my grandmother as a broach/pin.

Thanks again.

bdaqueen

I agree with swamperbob 100%. Well done well explained.

The book is progressing slowly. But the delay allows time for new counterfeits to turn up. They do all the time. I have over 1,000 varieties from the period between 1823 and 1860, but I suspect that I have only a fraction of the actual total.

I know that I could publish at almost any time, but I am also waiting for access to an XRF apparatus that would allow me to fully test my pet theory that a linkage can be made between counterfeit coins by the trace contaminants in the metal. When I lived in New England I had access to an XRF machine that gave me hope that my theory was correct, but it tested the surface randomly (not pin point) and surface accretions distorted the results - but trace contaminants were present and I was able to link several coins that I suspected of being manufactured at the same location.

If I could locate a test apparatus that gave pin point results I could test plating and core (especially on coins with test cuts).

I am not sure I would publish the results of XRF tests because counterfeiters could improve their alloys - but I want to find a way to confirm linkages before I publish. I believe it is also a way to conclusively separate some modern Numismatic forgeries from the period counterfeits.