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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;robinjojo, post: 8251669, member: 110226&quot;]That&#039;s correct, even partially dated cobs from the 1620s to 1651, the last year of the shield design, replaced the following year by the pillar and wave obverse at Potosi, are rare.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem is not just a lot of the legend off the flan, it is also the often horrendous strikes which were frequently uneven and drastically doubled and shifted.&nbsp; A date on one of these coins can start with a fairly clear 1 and perhaps even a 6, but a die shift strike can rotate the 1 and 6 over the last two numbers of the date, which can make determining those final numbers a real challenge.</p><p><br /></p><p>That problem, supposedly was addressed with the introduction of the pillar and waves design, which has, depending on the period, either the last two numbers of the date between the pillars, or, in the 1700&#039;s the last three number of the date.&nbsp; However, even with this format coins were often weakly struck in the area of the date, or, again, doubling of the strike renders the date illegible or difficult to decipher.&nbsp; So, dates remained problematic with many cobs through 1773, the last year cobs were minted at Potosi.&nbsp; The milled 8 reales that replaced the cobs generally assured that all of the essential information could be found on any given coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think it is important to remember that cobs were coins of necessity, products of expediency. Hammer struck coins were easy to produce, while machine struck coins, which actually were being produced in Spain starting in the late 1580s, are very costly to manufacture.&nbsp; It made sense, then, to have the colonial mints, located near the silver and gold sources, to quickly convert the ore into coins that were really little more than ingots impressed with the Spanish shield, giving them legal status. Unfortunately, this method opened the doors to fraud at the Potosi Mint, with coins produced with underweight flans and highly debased silver.&nbsp; This fraud, instigated by various assayers and other officials lead eventually to the trial and execution of one of the assayers of that mint, Juan Ramírez de Arellano in 1649.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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