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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 54253, member: 112&quot;]Now let&#039;s get the Spanish cob. I don&#039;t know cobs as well as I do the later milled coinage, but I&#039;ll tell you what I can. The obverse of the coin is the side with the large cross. The pic needs to be turned 90 deg. to the left by the way for it to be oriented correctly. The coin, if genuine, is an 8 reales struck at the Potosi mint in Bolivia. As you can see the coin is dated 1687, and was issued under the authority of Charles II of Spain.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some of the letters in the legends, those that can still be seen anyway, are a bit odd. But that&#039;s not unknown for these coins. Now look at that circle design with the mountains &amp; sun above them on the obverse. That symbol is a countermark from Peru. And it is that countermark, which more than anything else leads me to believe the coin is probably genuine.</p><p><br /></p><p>You see, in the years before this coin was struck, there was a scandal at the Potosi mint that rocked the Spanish Empire. The mint officials got caught producing coins of debased metal ( low silver content ). And it got to the point that Potosi coins were not accepted almost anywhere. But once the scandal was over with and the Potosi mint once again began producing coins with good silver - many other parts of the Empire, like Peru, still would not readily accept them. So they would assay the Potosi coins to verify the silver content. Then they would countermark the coins they approved. </p><p><br /></p><p>So that countermark makes this coin a rather neat collectible all by itself. It&#039;s too bad it was turned into jewelry - for just about any numismatic value was destroyed when this was done.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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