Any ideas on this Spanish cob?

I was wondering if anybody could provide attribution information and/or a rough date range on this Spanish cob? It is not my coin, and not in hand. Nor do I know the diameter and weight yet, though I have sent a request for that information to the seller.

What I find intriguing is that it apparently comes with an old collection envelope, showing that somebody paid a dollar for it in 1943.

It looks like it might be pretty small, so I'm guessing a half-real, maybe? Or one real? There's that "I" on there. But from which country/mint? And when? I'm out of my depth here.

Thanks!

 

It is a Spanish cob. The 8-reales coins would have been equivalent to a dollar in early America. I suspect this is a smaller denomination, of 1/2- or 1-real.

I imagine this one is probably 17th century (1600s), from the look of it, though I don’t know. I’m a bit out of my depth with cobs, as mentioned.

 

Oh! Gotcha. Who knows? Yeah, I suppose that was probably $1 USD that was spent for it, back in the day.

 

Yeah, I’d love to go on a shopping spree in 1943! Fire up the time machine!

If I remember correctly, the seller is asking something like $35 OBO. I’ve been trawling for interesting $25-50-ish material for my giveaways, so I stumbled across this. A cob would be fun.

IF it’s real. I don’t see any obvious red flags, but I’m far from an expert in this particular niche. The old collection envelope (if real itself) sort of boosts my confidence a bit. It’s not your typical two-bit modern tourist fake of a cob, at any rate.

 

I’ve thought we need a shipwreck coin in the giveaway mix, just for fun. Saw some El Cazador Spanish silver, but like so many pieces from that wreck, they are horribly corroded, and the El Cazador stuff priced under $50 is small (half-reales or broken fragments) and wretched looking.

I might get another Admiral Gardner shipwreck copper. Those are plentiful and affordable. I gave one away way back in Giveaway #6. I presently have a slightly nicer one than that bookmarked.

 

I used to have a 1783 8-reales piece in an old small ANACS slab (with the pedigree on the label). Though corroded a little, it wasn’t too bad, as El Cazador coins go. I paid a similar amount (just over $100) for it, as I recall, back in the early 2000s. It would be difficult if not impossible to find a decent slabbed El Cazador piece of eight for that price nowadays.

 

This just in, over on CU.



Philip IV through Ferdinand VI at least gives us a date range of 1605 through 1759, which syncs up with the suspicion that both I and @paddyman98 stated, of it likely being from the 1600s.

So it seems to be a 1605-1759 1-real piece, then. From Lima, Peru, or Potosí, Bolivia. That’s a lot more information than I started with.

 

Thanks. I still don’t have weight and dimensions, but I’ll tag robinjojo over in my thread on NF.

 

More information from CU: