Okay first of all this is my first post looking for help so I apologize if I make a mess of this and if there is anything that I can do better to improve this then please any assistance is appreciated. Anyway to the meat of my issue, I work in a coin shop and we bought a small collection of world coins, mostly British, that included a couple of beautiful looking Counter stamped 8 Reales which we sent off to be graded and authenticated along with several of the better British coins. We knew the British coins were authentic and just wanted a grade but we were unsure of the two 8 Reales counter stamps. We knew the coins were consistent with known patterns and they looked good, but just didn't have the experience or knowledge to make the call ourselves (I am very green and the owner of the shop deals primarily in US coins). The coins came back from NGC all beautiful and graded including one of the counter stamps, a 1757 8 Reales from Jamaica in the British Commonwealth, counter stamped 6s 8d from 1758 in XF Details,but with one question, a 1792 8 Reales that appears to be counter stamped with 4s 9d by the Arkwright family in Cromford, Derbyshire, this came back in a body bag which seemed to suggest that the coin was fake. So the tale could have ended there but I am an inquisitive sole by nature and I have seen a couple of images of this coin online and ours seemed the right design and (this was not my suggestion but the store's owner, I am green remember!) the toning seemed consistent throughout the coin as if the the coin had been counter stamped in the sime time period, give or take a few decades, to when it had been struck. As a learning experience I thought why not call NGC and find out why it came back as ungraded. I called NGC and was told "we don't grade merchant counter stamps anymore" so the mystery was once again reopened. I could have left it there but the collection seemed consistently genuine and I thought it was wortk a mulligan if you will, so I sent the coin to PCGS (after first confirming that they grade these coins!). I waited 5 weeks and eventually got an e-mail from PCGS.....they were unable to say if it was genuine so they sent it back to us by FedEx and refunded out grading fees. So here I am 4 months after first getting this coin on my desk still non the wiser, as I am green I didn't really know enough about all the resources out there from avid collectors until one of my customers suggested this would be a great way to further my knowledge so I thought why not. I suppose my question is what do you guys think, I know what this coin is supposed to be, I know it is fairly rare but how do I know what it really is and what value is there in this coin either way. I am at your mercy, please be kind and I have one suggestion for myself already, make my threads a little shorter (sorry I wanted you to know my train of thought as to why I feel this coin has a chance of being genuine).
the name on the stamp of arkwright is famous in the uk, as he invented the spinning jenny to aid the production of cottom fabric, his mill was at cromford in derbyshire and this is either a genuine piece from the time of the invention or a souvenir, i have honestly not seen anything like it before but in the late 18th century in the uk there was a shortage of regal coinage and many local traders/councils issued tokens for use as coinage and some were even counterstamps on foreigh coins. the first link deals with the token that you have of which only 2 examples are known in the uk, and the second link is a history of the mill.................. http://www.massonmills.co.uk/News/Wins-Silver-2006.html.php http://www.peakdistrictinformation.com/visits/arkwright.php if indeed your token is genuine why don't you ask your employer to donate it to the arkwright trust to further enhance the information about an extremely important worldwide site of industrial revolution history.......
Thanks moneyer it is very interesting that this coin was perhaps part of a story that lead to the industrial revolution, that's the kind of history that is so attractive about these types of coins.
This appears genuine to me Michael. It matches up well with the example shown in Brunk, although his isn't on an 8-Reales. Your counterstamp is fairly common with about 70 pieces documented, all but a handfull on 8-Reales coins. Yours is the first on one dated 1792. There's at least one contemporary counterfeit known on a 1798 8-Reales, so maybe PCGS was hesitant to grade it for that reason. I have a feeling that it would be difficult to tell the difference, so they took a pass. Thanks for posting it. Bruce
Cromford 4/9 details. I read your post on the Cromford 4/9 with interest. This area of numismatics is my speciality so I hope I can help. In my opinion your example is wrong. Whether it is contemporary or modern is difficult to decide, but I tend towards modern, say about early 1990’s. There are about 55 known genuine examples and your countermark is different in a number of ways. The massonmills website quoted by moneyer12 is totally inaccurate regarding the number of genuine examples. If you wish to sell your example I would like to buy it for further research. If I can help in any way please ask.
