1799 8 Reales Nueva Guatemala - Genuine Or Something Else?

Wait for the experts to weigh in, but two of the three sides look good to me
https://www.coinarchives.com/w/lotv...0cefec31216e

Agreed, appear legit - patina/surfaces have a very proper Guatemala mint look.

I think you're seeing a blobbish overlap area right around the the spot between his head and the ordinal IIII... but then a quick, sharp overlap at the first 9 of 1799.

That weight is clearly quite high, but there's a lot more observed variance outside of the Mexico City emissions so I'm not particularly worried by that.

Fixed

I was asked to comment. I had missed this issue and in the future if anyone else would like my opinion please ask.

swamperbob22@aol.com

The density is correct as is the weight. So the coin is a correct silver alloy it is not a debased counterfeit.

I am not as expert in this series as Mexico City but I can give you a few opinions and some facts.

1. Contemporary Circulating Counterfeits made to copy this mint are few and far between and never look this good. In addition they would not be of the correct density. Therefore you can rule out a circulating counterfeit made while the coin was in circulation in Guatemala or Spain.

2. There was no impetus to make near full weight silver counterfeits for this mint either, because there was no Chinese premium on the coins of Guatemala. So you can rule out Class 2.

3. These coins were unlike those of Mexico City, they were not circulating anywhere in the 1890's so there is no reason for a locally circulating silver counterfeit either. (Coins of this type were made to take advantage of a differential value between the intrinsic value of a coin and the fiat value of the same coin where it was still legal tender.)

That leaves only two options - a Numismatic Forgery or a Genuine coin.

To repeat - the density and weight are correct.

Regarding the edge, there are two parallel edge dies used in a typical edger and here one die is completely worn out while the other die is in pretty decent shape. The overlap is difficult to pinpoint because one die is so poor. However, it seems that the worn half covers about half of the perimeter from just about the 1 in the date clockwise to just before the DEI.

The matrix block used by Guatemala is something I have not seen so while I might see a few odd segments, I do not consider them to be enough to condemn the coin.

I also do not know how many edge mills were in use at Guatemala. Mexico City had several that were used for the 8Rs. Perhaps a smaller output mint may not have had as many spare dies and therefore employed one poor die mated with a good one.

So I would at this point believe that the coin is probably genuine. In hand I would check the surfaces in protected areas looking for evidence of flow lines. If I owned the coin, I would likely secure a laboratory level XRF test to exclude the possibility of modern silver trace contaminants.

For the average collector since the coin is relatively common - I would accept it as genuine.