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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;tbchev71, post: 1352462, member: 25599&quot;]OK, I realize my reply to this thread is more than 2 years after the last post BUT, I&#039;ve just spent over 3 weeks researching a similar coin for an acquaintance of mine and I thought I would share what I&#039;ve learned -as it&#039;s been kind of an <i>Indiana Jones-like</i> adventure for me. I&#039;ve not seen the original images posted by 09bushk, but the images posted by Coincoins look exactly what I have in my hands -as do quite a bit of other images I&#039;ve found on the web.</p><p><br /></p><p>You can disagree with me if you&#039;d like but I feel pretty certain that my findings are conclusive and accurate -especially because I started this with absolutely no idea of what I was looking at. At first there was nothing on the coin I could identify other than a squared cross on one side which I only guessed was Spanish. The coin looked so old and so worn around the edges that I honestly overlooked the date markings, believing they were cut off. Early on, the closest images I found on the web were of Atocha Shipwreck coins, and I thought I had it figured out. Not completely satisfied with this, I eventually stumbled upon Sedwickcoins.com which showed coins with MUCH greater resemblance to my coin, only in gold and not in silver as I suspected mine to be. It was through this website that I learned that the denomination of the coin could be determined by the top number between the two pillars. It was an &quot;ah-ha!&quot; moment that quickly led me down the right path in regards to the other markings. I soon found other sites that explained the layout of the markings in great detail such as the Mint Mark (L) positioned at the top left, Assayer Mark (N) at the top right, P.V.A (abbreviation of the legend PLVS VLTRA) across the middle, and finally a 7 | 3 | 6 across the bottom. This 7 | 3 | 6&nbsp; on the bottom row actually denoted the year of the coin, and made me realize that the markings at the top left that looked like more like 1730, were indeed being cut-off -especially the top of the 6, making it look like a small zero. It was about this time that I noticed the markings &quot;ANO&quot; right before what I know realized was the date, and remembered that A˜NO is Spanish for &quot;year&quot;. The markings before this of REX are Latin for &quot;king.&quot; I was finally on to something here!</p><p><br /></p><p>Now that I knew I had a 1736 coin of &quot;8&quot; denomination, my search began to focus on whether it was a &quot;Reale&quot; or an &quot;Escudo.&quot; I was also running across the term &quot;Cob&quot; quite often in my findings and this was really throwing me off. The word Cob was seemingly used for all older Spanish coins that were produced in a certain &quot;hand-made&quot; way in which the coin was stamped into an imperfect chunk of material that was hand sheared off a longer bar of material. Surprisingly it took a bit more effort to finally uncover the fact that &quot;Cobs&quot; refer entirely to how the coin was produced, not to it&#039;s material. After all this I finally found just a couple of sources that stated that in fact Silver cobs are known as &quot;Reales&quot; and gold cobs are known as &quot;Escudos.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>This was great information but now I was more confused than ever. The coin I held in my hand was almost certainly made of silver -or some other soft, silvery material as indicated by my scratching with an exacto blade on it&#039;s outer edge. I should mention by the way that the edge of the coin was mildly suspicious from the moment I first handled it. It had such a pronounced &quot;seam&quot; that indicated it could have been produced with a cheap press of some kind. But scratching this edge and uncovering a bright and shiny material made me thing twice. So now that I knew that a only a &quot;Reale&quot; would be made of silver, my final task was to start comparing photos of genuine &quot;Reales&quot; to my own coin. It didn&#039;t take long before I realized that authentic Spanish Reales of this date, did NOT look very similar to my coin. In fact the authentic &quot;Escudos&quot; (made of gold) were fashioned in patterns that looked almost identical to my coin. In comparing photos of both Reales and Escudos, I noticed that Reales typically show 3 digits of the date within the same space (736) between the pillars, whereas Escudos will space out the 7, 3 and 6 into the left, middle and right of the pillars. Similar to this, I found a reference that states P | V | A would only be found on Escudos, while PLV | SVL | TRA would be found on Reales. </p><p><br /></p><p>As for the final straw in my search to determine whether or not I had an authentic coin, I also stumbled upon a post and photo from another coin forum <a href="http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=83133" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=83133" rel="nofollow">http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=83133</a> that affirmed my suspicion. One thing I picked up on during all of this is that true &quot;Cob&quot; coins are kind of like snowflakes. No two really look alike due to their method of production. To my amazement, here was a photo of a coin, very different in color -and maybe even in composition, but seemingly WORN into the EXACT SAME SHAPE as mine. That number 6 was cut off in exactly the same place, as were all of the rest of the markings on the obverse. I found yet another and even closer match in wear -but especially in coloring on this page <a href="http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?topic=47308.0" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?topic=47308.0" rel="nofollow">http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?topic=47308.0</a>. Further postings from members describe what was once a gold-plated souvenir with just the base metal remaining.</p><p><br /></p><p>I am confident in saying that is exactly what I have as well, and I wanted to post this information in hopes of saving anyone else the time I&#039;ve spent researching this coin. Although, I would not give this time back as I&#039;ve actually enjoyed every minute of it. I learned way more than I anticipated about Spanish coins, the second reign of Philp the 5th, Lions, Castles and even the capital of Peru!</p><p><br /></p><p>I leave you with a couple of other images of similar fakes here: <a href="http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&amp;TOPIC_ID=9097" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&amp;TOPIC_ID=9097" rel="nofollow">http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&amp;TOPIC_ID=9097</a></p><p>and here: <a href="http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?topic=163246.0" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?topic=163246.0" rel="nofollow">http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?topic=163246.0</a></p><p><br /></p><p>And finally, pics of the obverse and reverse of MY coin in question, as well as an outline I&#039;ve made of the coin. This same general &quot;octogonal&quot; shape is evident in other fakes of the same coin. I would say that if your coin is shaped anywhere similar to this, you have a genuine fake on your hands. P.S. I read that 1736 is the most commonly faked Spanish coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH]157029.vB[/ATTACH][ATTACH]157030.vB[/ATTACH][ATTACH]157031.vB[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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