1808 - 2 Real, More Info? Worth Buying? - Pics

I say pass. Common date, common type coin, why buy a problem piece that has been harshly cleaned when there are so many nice ones out there for the same or lower price. This one is a $10 coin. (May I also please comment, it doesn't look like a metal detector find, silver gets funky in the ground and this coin just looks cleaned with some corrosion around "hispan" on the reverse. If it was found by metal detector, it was probably either recently lost or found in some sort of container)

harrison2 The coin is a common Mexican 2R with differential wear probably caused by poorly aligned dies and it is NOT well centered. Parts of the coin look G-VG (near mint mark) while others are F-VF (near the King's ear). A net grade of VG to possibly F is about all I would give it. It is cleaned or pocket scrubbed which is typical for a fine or lower grade.

I believe that it is likely REAL. I have not yet run into a similarly dated counterfeit using the correct design. Most 2R foegeries are made from fantasy dies with incorrect designs. Modern numismatic forgeries of the type have not yet appeared in the market.

The value is low - well below the $48 asking price. I would not pay over $20 for one like this and I would only go that high if I loved the coin for some reason. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Most catalog prices for colonial Mexican coins are out of date or just simply incorrect. Krause is too low on most colonial issues and uses average prices that are inaccurate by date/grade in most cases. Work on population studies by date/grade in the Mexican series is on going. No one yet knows for sure which date/grade combunations are truly rare. Lower grade coins like this one tend to be the most common. Survival rates of VF or better copies is unknown. Collector interest in higher grades typically drives prices in VF to levels up to 4 times Krause. Perhaps the seller is translating this higher price trend into the lower grades without understanding what the market pressure actually is.

The case for the coin having been buried is not clear to me. Effects of burial are complicated by ground conditions - acidity/composition of the soil and the amount of water present are critical. Also how the coin was buried will impact preservation. A small sealed container in sandy desert soil can produce MS full luster silver coins after 100 years (based on a couple Mexican Hoards discovered in the 1970s), but in a loamy wet topsoil a coin can corrode significantly in a few months.

Please check detector finds for counterfeits. Many contemporary counterfeit coins were consigned to the trash heap. I deal with several metal detectorists (their word) who routinely come up with forgeries. Some can be quite valuable to guys like myself. In many cases, it is far better profit wise to find a forgery than an original.