I have sort of followed my inclinations and opportunity and I noticed today I have about two dozen examples of mexican coinage. My dad left three Mexican coins in his estate, a 72 moreles peso, a 68 cuahmotec 50 centavos, and a 1950 25 centavos. Mexico had the first operational mint in the new world,established in Mexico City, still operating today, the mint mark is a large M, small o, expressed in various ways thru its history. There are numerous branch Mexican mints but the Mexico city mint established a standard for the New World, Mexican money was commonly traded in the USA until laws of 1858 were enacted to demonitize foreign money. Back then there were not quite so many idealistic citizens of the world as there are today. I have picked up many more examples of Mexican coinage on my own, the new libertad so far has eluded me, but I have picked up a few Mexican coins that I think are collectable. For instance the 1904 ten centavo piece, not having a grading book I would guess that the piece is a strong vf it has the familiar eagle perched on a cactus plucking the snake on the obverse, except the word mexicano is mexicana, the reverse has the denomination and a half wreath and bow. I have three of the modern mexican coinage, circulated 20 centavos, 2 pesos, and 10 pesos, the tenner has an aztec calender motif and is bimetallic, the bimetallic sort of coin I am not too interested in, but the aztec motif is interesting, a very busy design and the symbolism is something I need to understand more before I comment on it. I have three Hidlago coins, (1951-53) all 5 pesos, all .720 silver the design is typical of modern US hero worship coinage, what makes these coins special to me is that they have lettered edging instead of the typical reeded edge that became common with the advent of steam powered presses. The lettered edge proclaims agriculta, industria, and comercio (farming, industry,and commerce) My Mexican friends tell me that Hidalgo helped to build Mexico by establishing learning in the arts of agriculture industry and commerce. I tend to believe that the principals are more important in the long run then the personalities that espouse them. Then I have 4 cap and rays pieces, the cap is the Liberty cap, Libertad in spanish, the cap is also featured on the capped bust series of american coinage atop the head of the personification of Liberty, it sits atop the pole of the seated liberty coinage, it is inscribed on all american coinage, it comes from the liberty cap worn by free persons in ancient rome, a symbol of the liberty that they strove to preserve tho they were subsumed by the tyrannies of the imperators that arose with the spread of empire. One of my friends at work Fredy (alfredo) told me that his papi used to give him one of the twenty centavo pieces to buy ice cream, the twenty centavo piece is about the same size as the old US Large cent pieces. the next piece in my collection of mexican coinage is the xuahmotec 5 pesos of 1948, in a low ef condition it has lost most of its lustre. Its symbolic eagle is a bit different in that it is pictured hunched over its serpent snack more so than other representations. It has a denominated fineness of .900 30 grams. Sometime between the .720 of the old pesos and 1960 Mexican coinage was devalued, the 1960 Morelos Peso is only .100 silver, America was soon to follow in making their coinage of base elements, but it is noteworthy to me that mexico chose to include a small element of silver long after europe had debased their trading coinage. In 1968 the olympic games came to Mexico City, to observe that occasion a special 25 peso Olympic coin was minted, it was composed of the treasured (and hoarded) .720 silver. Today, most Mexicans that I talk to tend to think that those old .720 silver coins are worth far more than what they actually trade for. Inflation really takes off, my next coin is a 1979 50 peso coin, again of the .720 silver, I think it might be Juarez, the reverse eagle has become a stylized series of squiggles that represent the eagle perched on the cactus giving a good beaking to a serpent. My last coin (relieved applause) is the 1982 50 peso coin, I cannot tell you what common name this coin goes by in Mexico, I also cannot tell you what the obverse looks like. (look it up yourself, do you think I am your slave?) But this coin might arguably be the last one minted before hyper inflation kicked in. Afterwards, the old denominations were cut by three digits, a 1000 peso coin became a one peso coin. Tho the grandees in Mexico seemed to make the attempt to make their coins worth something thru the devaluation, they did not stop making them of base metals. I like Mexican coinage, and will be looking out for more examples of them, I heard recently that there were balloons being floated about starting up a circulating coinage containing preciious metals. Mexicans were years ahead of americans in seeing their coins devalued, and they seem to me also to be more aware of the differeneces between coins made of silver and gold and coins made of brass and aluminum. Since Mexico has been minting coins for about 300 years more than we have here in america, I doubt that my collection of mexican coins will ever do more than make a slight scratch across the surface of Mexican coin history, but I find them interesting at least the post colonial ones.
