Thanks for the comments Geoff. Here is my only other cob, this one I dug on a 1750s -1790 site in Westmoreland County, PA. Can you tell me anything about it? I may not have the cross side oriented properly.
Hey Steve, nice Pillar and Waves cob, and great find. Lets start with the reverse (cross side) of you cob. The orientation of your pic is off, so if you rotate clockwise placing the 6 o'clock position of the cross to 9 o'clock you can see a partial "P" (indicating Potosi mint) to the left of the cross and near the edge of the coin. Lions are top right and bottom left, castles are top left and bottom right in the quadrants of the cross. From your pics, it looks like this cob is thick, what we used to call a "Chunky variant", and since the die was larger than the planchet, there's no other details struck onto the reverse side of your cob that will help us identify the assayer or date. So lets move on to the obverse side of your cob. The photo orientation is correct, and I'm sure was a no brainer for you, seeing the well struck "2" at the 12 o'clock position. This of course is the denomination, 2 Reales. I can see a partial assayers initial in the 7 o'clock position. The wear from circulation, as well as the letter running off the planchet, prevents a clear view of the assayer.To help us identify which assayer that may be, lets look at the 6 o'clock position where we see 3 digits. This is the date, and seeing 3 digits tells us this cob dates in the 1700s. Again, circulation wear is making this a challenge, and even though the first digit doesn't look like a 7, there's nothing else it could be. The next digit is hard to see so I'm going to skip that one for now and look at the last digit. This appears to be a 7. So lets go back to the assayers initial at the 7 o'clock position, and try to narrow down who he is. With all that's visible, I'll have to call this assayer as "M" (Jose de Matienzo 1723-1740). Now lets go back to the date and take a closer look at the 3rd digit. On my end it looks like a 5, but that would change the assayer to "Q", and the assayers initial on your coin is definitely not a "Q". If you could send a better pic without the shadow on the 6 o'clock position, I may be able to see something different. Hope this helps. Maybe someone else will chime in.
Nice recoveries Geoff. We're those water, beach, or and finds? I'm having a sort of slow year. Besides the cob, the only other Spanish I've added to my collection was 1778 two reales "head" Pistareen, which was the 17th Spanish silver to come out of this tavern site. I have all but two of those. Here are a couple pics I have on my phone.
