Your favorite (or rarest) Central South America Piece.

About 90% of my collection, minus the large silver coins, are foreign bin finds. In the past I used to find such great undervalued coins.

Nowdays, there's not much out there. It's not so much that Americans are turning to foreign coins, it probably was the great silver rush of the past few years that lead many to rummage through junk bins looking for silver coins of any nation in order to cash in the silver. Along the way, these new "searchers" found many unusual or unique coins that began there interest in foreign issues.

Also, the greater LA area has many new immigrants from Asia and Latin America and they seem to be more keen on foreign issues. In some cases they do not merely pick through the bins, but they got the cash to buy the whole lot. Leaving us old "pickers" with not much available but ordinary Canadian and Mexican coins.

 

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Okay, here’s the companion piece for the 1840 Unitarian Peso [see my comment this thread, May 30th]. The Unitarians and the Federalists were engaged in a decade+ long Civil War in Argentina from 1829 until at least 1840. Rosas was the head of the Federalists and a typically nasty dictator. This is an 8 reales or 8 soles but was only slabbed “AU details” due to a light old cleaning.

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Another dictator: this is the much more common Bolivian 1-Melgarejo piece but uncommon in this grade: NGC-63, no hairlines or cleaning.

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I love these “dictatorial coins” but they’re apparently unpopular since they’re not particularly expensive (IMO) for the rarity.

 

Melgarejo was a particularly cruel and stupid brute.

The 1836 Rosas piece you show (CJ-9) is particularly interesting. La Rioja had pretty much abandoned the "soles" name and reverted to "reales" by that time (why?). The reverse says "8S" which could mean "8 Soles" but that seems unlikely to me. I think it is probably a silver strike from pattern dies originally intended for a gold "8 eScudos" (or "Scudos") coin, but I could easily be wrong on that point.

The 1840 Rebel Peso and the 1815 8 Soles (S/R variety) you showed earlier in this thread are both particularly impressive coins.

With respect to the coins being undervalued, for someone accustomed to US or Canadian coin prices, just about everything else in world coins looks cheap.

 

Well this is one of my latter ones: acquired middle of 2017. I've been looking for a Peru 8 escudos of this date as it's the 1st gold coin struck by Independent Peru*. Since I collect coins of the early Independent Latin American nations, this is appropriate for the collection. These are reasonably priced: as are most Peru coins.


Peru 8 escudos, 1826 Cuzco mint, NGC-62
prooflike surfaces, some flan flaws, no hairlines or "cabinet friction" I could discern. The photo shows a grainy planchlet and color changes on the high points of Athena which detract from the actual appearance.

I knew this date wasn't super common but I recalled I saw one before at the 2008 Millenium sale. However, when I checked, my memory was faulty & that early Peru piece was an 1829. It turned out that this is the highest graded specimen, the next being an EF-40 and one VF. There is also an 1826 Lima mint in ms-61.

* There are also 1826 1/2 and 1 escudos struck and it's logical to assume that those would've been made 1st as they were getting set up for production.

 

This is a most impressive coin, not only for its historical importance but also the fact that it has such a full strike (no mushy centres here). I believe that it will be a very long time before I will see another so nice as this one.

 

Beautiful and scarce coin, Gallienus. Specially scarce since it was struck at the Cuzco
mint. Congratulations!

 

what is the mintage on this coin ?

 

This is one of the more significant spanish colonial coins in my collection. It is an 8 Escudos piece recovered from the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de La Luz, a spanish merchant ship which sank of the coast of Montevideo on the Rio de la Plata ca. 1750.

The wreck was discovered around 1990, and an incredible treasure of spanish colonial coins, mostly Santiago, Chile mint 1750 and 1751 dated 8 escudos recovered, many in mint state.
The coins were sold via Sothebys (in 1991 if I recall). I bought this piece at that sale. Bidders were given the choice to have their coins cleaned of marine deposits if they wished, or in original as-recovered conditions. I chose to have mine in the condition it was after 200 years in the sea floor, with marine deposits.

This is a very poor picture but it is the only one I have at the moment:

 

My favorite is my avatar

 

Here's are a couple of my favorites:

 

Posted it before, but a favorite.

 

I really like the Latin, Central- South America coins. Nice coins all. Here's one of my favorites.

 

Isn't Cuba in North America?

 

Mexico is in North America.

 

On Ebay it is "North Caribbean".

 

It was somewhat irregular purchasing it. When I called to have someone look at it, I was told the coin had been shipped off apart from all the other auction lots for an interested party to look at. I don't know what he was looking for, but he didn't find it and he ended up not bidding on this coin. I looked at all the Peru 8 Escudos in person at the Eliasberg sale in 2005 as well as buying the 1840-Cuzco out of Millenium and narrowly missing the 1854 or 55 Lima 8E out of the same sale. Thus I have a little experience with these.

 

I'll work on getting the numbers or an estimate. While unlisted in my ancient Krause, it's not possible that any government during this time would not keep account of how many gold coins they struck their 1st year.

 

Note that your previous articles on this mention the La Luz as having sunk in 1752. Until reading your article I wasn't familiar with any Colonial Santiago coins of 1750. I only knew of the 1751's which are far more common. This seems to show that the gold wears down quickly in the high grades.

 

The big 1869 1 sol is my current favorite, and it might get displaced by the little brother 1903 1/2 dinero which is in the pipeline somewhere...

 

Spirityoda, that 1932 Cuban Star Peso is a lovely coin. From the smallish scan, I'd grade it somewhere in the MS60-3+, probably better, if the luster is really as nice as the scan hints at....