Found a 1750 silver Spanish 1/2 reale minted in Mexico City. Oddly enough it was found in a field, in a coastal town with my metal detector. A super rare find for this part of the woods and just thought I would share!
Foreign coins, in particular the coinage of Spain and France, freely circulated in the United States as legal tender until foreign coins were finally demonetized beginning in 1857. Spanish coinage was fairly common.
Not really.....as these coins were legal tender in the early days in the colonies, as well as the 1800's. Silver was silver and could be spent anywhere . What you may want to find out was the location you found the coin ever a Tavern or inn......etc. Must admit though when you said curious find in Maine....I thought you were talking about Bill.
That is an awesome find! Yeah if you read up on that 18th century time period you'll find that the US mint did not exist until like the 1790s I believe. Didn't George Washington make it happen? So before 1790 we had early colonists walking around engaging in commerce using foreign coins just like that as that's what was available. Fits the time period perfectly. Sent from my XT1093 using Tapatalk
To further expand on this... Spanish silver was more trusted than US silver, and even British silver, in the early days. A piece of 8, or 8 reales, was worth a dollar. 2 bits, 4 bits, 6 bits, a dollar... quarters were called a bit, so were 2 reales.
What a cool find! A set of coins that circulated in early America would include a very wide variety. A friend of mine found a 1R while detecting outside Richmond, Va.
Thank you all for the wider scope of history. It was only five inches deep in a field used for farming, ect. There was a farm on the property dating to the late 1700's
Interesting find. One-half real was worth about six cents then but of course had much greater purchasing power. One wonders about the history of that coin before it was dropped and buried for probably 200 years or more. It's big brother is probably out there, too.
Very cool. I've heard of quite a few coin finds there the best a friend found while dismantling an early house in Yarmouth. An au oak tree shilling I'm still trying to buy from him
To whomever may be reading this, if you find a old spanish coin in the ground, it would be very interesting if you would dicument where the coin was found, and how deep, and start a note with a pedegree; so that way a piece of history like this one could be preserved for hundreads of years, adn could eb definitavly a colonial coin
