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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Dafydd, post: 26584152, member: 86815&quot;]This is a commonly encountered coin and can be easily found &quot;raw&quot; or slabbed and often in presentation cases. The price often depends how many are on Ebay at any particular time.</p><p>The following coin cost $90 on an online auction but you can double that if slabbed or cased.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1693898[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1693899[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1693900[/ATTACH]</p><p>The <b>El Cazador</b> was a Spanish brig of war that sank in the Gulf of Mexico in 1784 while carrying a critical shipment of silver to Spanish colonial Louisiana. Dispatched from Veracruz, Mexico, the vessel was loaded with approximately 450,000 Spanish silver <b>reales</b>, primarily <b>eight reales</b> coins, also known as <b>&quot;Pieces of Eight.&quot;</b> This cargo was intended to replace the nearly worthless paper currency circulating in New Orleans and stabilize the faltering economy of the vast Spanish territory.</p><p><br /></p><p>The loss of the <i>El Cazador</i> without a trace proved to be a pivotal, unintended event that led to the territory’s economic collapse, which Spain never recovered from. Unable to sustain the colony, Spain ceded Louisiana back to France in 1800. Just three years later, Napoleon Bonaparte, in need of funds for his European campaigns, sold the territory to the United States in the <b>Louisiana Purchase of 1803</b>. This transaction effectively doubled the size of the young American republic, leading some historians to call <i>El Cazador</i> <b>&quot;The Shipwreck that Changed History.&quot;</b></p><p><br /></p><p>The wreck was finally discovered in 1993 by a commercial fishing trawler whose net snagged on the remnants of the cargo about 50 miles south of New Orleans. The recovery yielded a massive trove of silver coins, many of which were dated 1783 and bore the effigy of King Charles III of Spain. These recovered coins—which were the most valuable circulating currency of the day and served as the model for the first U.S. silver dollar—offer a tangible link to 18th-century colonial trade and are now are highly collectible.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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