8 reales

[jalgier]

Ahoy, all. This is less a "what's it worth" and more of a "is it worth anything". Purchased this off eBay, from a seller in Thailand I beleive. Was asking 3 bills, offered 250 and..sold. I hadn't taken the time to research reales, and right after he accepted my offer I got that felling. You know the one...why did I do that. Eitherhoo, I throw myself to your mercy and hopefully there won't be too many "a fool and his money" jokes. Weight is 26.7.

 

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[Mackaydon]

Mintmark is from Potosi, Bolivia. I also like the edge; one of several used (corded with the design of laurel leaves, milled,double milled, diaginally milled HERRINGBONE,etc.) It may have been cleaned but still a good looking coin.
Don...

 

[jalgier]

Agreed. The coin is nice, and hence my skepticism

 

[coinsareawesome]

What's got me worried about the coin is the fact that it came from Thailand. Did you weigh it?

 

[jalgier]

I did, it's 26.7 oz, from what I have read original weight should be 27 with some small amount of room for loss. I read anything under 26.6 should be cause for alarm. Again, with little wear, may be too lazy gut.

 

[smokeythecat]

Flip it on a wooden table top. Does it ring? If so, probably silver. Other base metals kind of go "thud".

 

[VTColonialDigger]

That is a very nice coin. The one thing that is a little suspicious is the date. If a company were to make fake coins, they might make coins dated "1776" targeted at the American coin collector because of the significance of that date in U.S. history. That's probably not the case, and it's probably the real deal, just something that I noticed when the possibility of it being fake was brought up.

This is a comparison between a fake and an authentic 8 reale



Yours looks more like the real one.

Another thing that makes me think that it is real is that the mint mark, like Mackaydon mentioned, is from Potosi, Bolivia, rather than a more common (and I would think more easily/normally faked) Mexico City mint mark.

Looking forward to see if this turns out to be real

 

[mcb66]

Check it with a magnet. A lot of fakes from Asia are magnetic.