Hey everyone, I recently received 3 "4 reales" coins from a person claiming his grandfather found them with a metal detector. I saw the porousness, and was hoping they were dug/water salvaged coins - but upon opening the 1807 coin, and giving it a good ol' fashion flick in the air - its a 100% dull THUD , and the porousness leads me to believe these coins are cast? He also sold about a dozen other coins, of many types, all with the same look Can a ground, or sea salvaged coin have no audible ring to it?? As a reference, i've included two coins that I did not purchase, but were recently sold by him (there were several others, mostly Bust Halves, a couple mexico 8 reales) The variety and aged look to the coins leads me to believe perhaps they were ground-dug , or he collected contemporary fakes (which apparently is a thing) I'm stuck as to whether I should return these 4 reales coins, they just do not seem like silver from the sound and look. Thanks so much for your help!
I haven't listened to a lot of dug 1790s silver coins, but I've seen a lot of cast counterfeits, and I'm pretty sure there are a lot more of the latter than the former.
Theres no lines on the edges, but there does look to be wear all over the coins, they seem pretty aged. I'm leaning heavily towards casted - but they dont seem like something that came from china yesterday (could be wrong)... I'm wondering if theres any value to these to a collector of vintage fakes, or if they are just lumps of pewter! The thing that strikes me odd, is that all of his coins seemed casted - but they all seemed heavily worn, cleaned, with damage to them (scratches, rim damage, etc). Thanks for your replies
Here are the better photos - they definitely look cast - but they also look old. very odd. I only removed one from the holder as I am working on returning these and I didnt feel I needed to do a "ping test" on more than the one.
There are known contemporary counterfeits of Spanish colonial coins and they are actively collected (I used to follow a Yahoo discussion group on this, and I think it's still active). I have very little knowledge of these and can't tell if these are contemporary or just something modern. Maybe there are some collectors of this material on CT that can help. I wouldn't get too excited, but hopefully, it's something to check before totally writing them off.
Thanks Oldhoopster - that is what I thought too... I have read about even several countries actively producing non-silver counterfeits to hurt the reputation of silver coinage during the Spanish war. (Some of these coins occasionally being more valuable than the authentic ones) The very poor casting, along with the digs made me question modern or contemporary - the seller also sold 2 obviously casted Mexico 8 reales, several US halves all looking like very poorly done. I thought maybe they came from a collection of counterfeits - so I am stuck now trying to determine if these have any historical value, or if they should be returned for a refund. Thanks again
I've found several reales with my detector, none of them look like yours. They look like pewter souvenir coins. Disneyland used to sell "pirate" treasure coins at they're "pirates of the Caribbean" ride. I bought several when I was 10. Yours look a lot like them
I'm going ahead and returning these coins - but from my correspondence with the seller, coupled with the variety, relatively small amount and consistent funky-look to most of these coins, I am thinking there is a chance that they came from a collection of vintage counterfeits from this persons Grandpa - which apparently does have collectibility to some. That being said - I bought them as dug/water damaged authentic silver coins, and with the amount of chinese fakes on the market am going to pass on them. I once received an unopened since the 1950's whisky bag, with silver coins from my Great Uncle. There was a counterfeit seated half dollar in there - so counterfeiting is nothing new, and can be quite interesting if there's real history to it.
I have genuine El Cazador shipwreck coins that definitely ring like silver. They were given to me by Craig Boyd who salvaged the El Cazador.
