1866 Maximillian Peso Authentic?

Hi!

To be honest - for me looks like the original one

DagonX

I hope it's authentic! It's a beautiful coin, I love the heraldry on the reverse!

The coin seems to have some issues with the rim and the denticles but it could be natural wear and droppage.(?)

Thank you all for your replies!

A couple of other things:

1). Can anyone confirm if these are definitely supposed to be slightly smaller than the later date cap & rays 8 Reales coins? This piece is actually the same diamater as a US Morgan dollar. For some reason I was under the impression that the Maximillian Peso was supposed to measure the same as the 8 Reales Pieces and thats what got me paranoid to begin with.

2) Is there anyway of knowing if that green stuff on both sides of the coin is verdigris or PVC damage, and any ideas on how to remove it?

fcrazo
Yeah, I've read about Maximillian and he had some pretty good ideas, he actually had a lot of liberal ideas to the dismay of the conservatives that put him in power. He really thought that all the Mexican people wanted him as emperor but found out that this was not so. It is a tragic and sad story.

swamperbob

Hey swamperbob! If your out there, I would like to ask you if you know by any chance if the minting of these pieces differed from the minting of the Cap & Rays series of this specific time period. It just seems that this design is a lot more complex than the Cap & Rays and I am amazed at the level of detail on the reverse. (coat of arms side) I've noticed that you know a lot about the minting of the 8R's, I am hoping you might know something about these.

Any additional info or follow up commentary regarding this coin is appreciated.

RealPeso - The Maximilian series has never been a favorite of mine. I own a few originals (one from each mint) and a large BUNCH of counterfeits that I picked up in random groups. There are far more fakes than originals in the market place. Most fakes are cast copies with ring die applied reeds.

But this is one of those coins where there were early Numismatic forgeries that are close to correct weight which were made from transfer impressions. As noted above the majority of the early fakes were cast (easily spotted) but some were struck from dies of varying quality. They were noted in articles by Hancock before 1970. As I recall I saw a really good struck counterfeit in the late 1960s in my home town and a few more popped up when I worked in Boston. But my interest was in Republican issues not those of the emperors, so I didn't study them closely.

The modern Chinese copies now flooding ebay are in the 20 gram range normally and they are often magnetic. I don't know why they are so light weight for sure - part is of course due to base metals being less dense. But 20 grams is too low to be accounted for by density alone. I have it on good authority (a Chinese forger) that in some cases the error is caused by the legend found on a typical 8R of the period. The legend ends with 20 Gs (which means 20 Grammos). My "god authority" misread this as meaning the coin weighs 20 grams. In fact, one term has nothing to do with the other. I suspect this same error has been made several times. By the way I didn't correct the forger's error. If he reads this forum he will know now.

But even without my warning, the newer silver forgeries from China are getting much closer to the correct weight. The word is out there.

As to the machinery used - it was originally French in origin as were the die patterns. This stands to reason since the Emperor was French. As pointed out elsewhere Maximilian made attempts in several areas to move Mexico toward a European (typically French society) but failed horribly.

After Max's death, the equipment was used for the Balance Scale Peso series. The three die steam press (which struck these coins) has a reeded collar die which creates a complete coining chamber. It produces a perfectly round coin and the diameter can be controlled. The diameter is fractionally smaller than most 8Rs. The average 8R has no established diameter. They vary significantly because most were struck in the older manual screw press which had no collar. Therefore a nice firm full struck coin will be greater in diameter than a weakly struck coin from the same press.

Even after the introduction of the steam press coining collars were NOT used on the majority of 8Rs because of the engrailed security edge. There was one year of 8R's struck with reeded collars and some of the standard die strikes were made on collared presses, but those date after 1886 and all are rather common (and of low interest to me anyway).

I hope this makes the subject a bit clearer than mud.

Nic

Thanks Nic!
Yeah, I took a shot on this one since my knowledge is limited but I think I did ok. I always wanted one of these & it still has a lot of detail compared to a lot of the ones I've seen.

swamperbob

Thank you for commenting on this thread swamperbob, as always your expertise is appreciated.




This I sadly know and found out the hard way, thats why I've held off on trying to obtain one of these but I have always wanted one so I decided to risk it on this particular piece. I was hoping for a nice spot on weight of 27.0 or 27.1 but instead I got a 26.6G. Either way everything seems to check out and I think I got lucky and have a original max peso.




This is exactly the information I was looking for and hoping that someone would be able confirm. THANK YOU!




I wonder what year and mint this would be? I have never come across a 8R with a reeded edge besides the fake chinese pieces, sounds very interesting.

Peter Thomas




I believe the Gs stands for 20 granos as in grains of silver and it was a old pre decimal system of rating the finesse of silver in coins. Mexican coins inherited the system from the Spanish. 12 Dineros was pure silver and each dinero was broken up into 24 granos.