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Neat die error.

Started by TwoKopeiki,

15 posts in this topic

TwoKopeiki

TwoKopeiki

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Wanted to share a personal victory with you guys. This coin spent quite a few weeks at NGC being authenticated and researched, but at the end of it all it made it into a well-deserved AU55 slab, properly attributed. Thumbs up to Ken for his diligence in researching this one.

 

Below is an 8 Reales coin from the Zacatecas Mint in Mexico. Normally the mint mark for Zacatecas is Zs. This should be the case with this coin, as well. In fact, there are quite a lot of coins available for this year and mint with the proper legend. What is less common is when a die sinker accidentally punches a superscript "s" in the wrong spot on the die, making the legend read "Z 8sR R G" instead of "Zs 8R R G". This is only the second coin with this error I've seen in my years of collecting Mexican War of Independence coinage, first one being a plate coin in the 8 Reales collector's bible by Gabriel Calbeto de Grau - "Compendium de 8 Reales" published in 1970. I'm sure the dies were quickly scrapped after the error was identified, making me wonder how many other examples survived.

 

1821_z8s_8r_obv.jpg1821_z8s_8r_rev.jpg

 

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physics-fan3.14

physics-fan3.14

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Interesting error. I really don't know anything about this coin or error, but misplaced punches were quite common in that era. Whenever you have die sinkers hand sinking dies, there are bound to be quite a few oddities.

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Conder101

Conder101

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Whenever you have die sinkers hand sinking dies, there are bound to be quite a few oddities.

Especially considering that many of them probably could not read, and even if they could the lettering in the die is backwards and reads right to left.

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TwoKopeiki

TwoKopeiki

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Well, die sinkers themselves may not have been able to read, but i guarantee you dies were inspected by the mint master before being put into production. Mexico City Mint, for example, prided themselves on the highest quality of coinage that slacked a bit during "armored bust" series of Fernando VII that was plagued with strike weakness. It's that quality that made 8 Reales the leading international currency, remaining so through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, dominating international trade between the Far East, the Mediterranean and the New World. Now, when War of Independence happened and Provisional Mints like Zacatecas sprung-up, the standard slacked a bit due to emergency conditions under which the mints operated. But even so, I am not aware of another 8 Reales that had a misplaced character. Some dies were missing small design elements like dots separating the legend or the fleur-de-lis in the middle of the shield (or had them in the wrong order), some used upside-down V's instead of A's, due to volumes of coinage produced quite a few dies were re-used, so overdates, recut letters, and over-assayers are abundant... But never an error in the actual legend.

 

Thank you all for the comments. I'm pretty excited about adding this to my collection and I'm glad you guys share some of that excitement.

 

Cheers,

 

Roman.

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WoodenJefferson

WoodenJefferson

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reale.jpg

 

I maybe way off base or using the wrong terminology, but the area at the base of these

letters are as struck but not from the die having this shape, it's a characteristic of the

actual metal flow during the striking.

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TwoKopeiki

TwoKopeiki

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Learn something new every day! I always thought those were characteristics of the die, not the strike. In fact, quite a few references catalog them as different varieties, so for the same year you can have the "flat letters" and "wavy letters". I'll read-up on bifurcation.

 

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