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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numismat, post: 3045644, member: 15019&quot;]This was a good week of hunting down contemporary circulating counterfeits with two new pickups. </p><p><br /></p><p>First: 1829 Zs 8 reales. Silvered base metal with mostly accurate details and a very well executed edge. This one is cataloged in Riddell&#039;s &quot;A Monograph of the Silver Dollar: Good and Bad.&quot; (1845) as number 221. According to the expert (swamperbob) this is the most commonly encountered of the types cataloged by Riddell. Weight is low at 23.49 grams compared to reference weight of 27.07 for genuine coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>A couple of the easiest to spot diagnostics for this type include the shape of the 9 in the date, the eagle&#039;s broken toe and the dentils being made from short straight segments rather than curved ones. This gives the dentils more of a multi-sided shape rather than a smooth circle.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]760812[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]760813[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]760814[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Second: 18XX (maybe 1833?) Zs 1 real. Unusual in that magnetic slide testing shows it to be made of high purity silver and it also appears to be struck from crudely made dies. Majority of contemporary counterfeits of the cap and rays types I have seen are design transfers from genuine coins and are made of silver washed base metal. This one weighs only 2.86 grams against a reference weight of 3.38.</p><p><br /></p><p>Notable (and interesting) obverse characteristics include a slanted mint mark Z, the superscript S after Z, 10G and 20D have a dot above rather than below and the assayer mark is just an M rather than OM. On the reverse REPUBLICA appears to be spelled with a V and the CA in MEXICANA is combined into one letter similar to an old English AE.</p><p>The edge is a rudimentary crescent or partial circle and dot pattern all around.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]760822[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]760823[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]760824[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]760825[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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