Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Reverse and Obverse Views of Cut Piece Found on Treasure Coast Beach by Scott C. |
Scott C. found the piece shown above on a Treasure Coast beach. I previously posted the reverse. He just sent me the picture of the obverse. I've been checking around to see if I could figure out what reale it came from. I found one good match so far. It is shown below.
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| Seville Eight Reales (1731 - 1735) with PA Assayers Mark. Source: Calico et al Monedas Espanolas, 6th ed., p. 278. |
The black lines I added are approximately, not exactly, where Scott's coin was cut. The obverse cut should include the entire "P." But you can see that those wedges match Scott's cut piece pretty well. It is the best match I have found so far.
Let me know if you can identify additional or better matches.
One thing that helped me pick out this Seville coin from other similar coins such as the Segovia eight-reale, which matches pretty well on the one side. The A, which is the assayer mark, separates the Seville coin from most others.
Not only is this coin an Old World coin, but it also dates well after 1715.
There could be other matches that I haven't found yet, but so far this is my best match, and it seems like a pretty good match to me.
I'll refer once more to the study I talked about yesterday. You might remember that the study involved 199 metal detected pistareens from what was called the Tobacco Colonies.
Old world Spanish coins and pieces, like the one shown above were among those found and included in the study.
Below is the number of Old World finds from each Old World Spanish mint.
Coincidentally, or not, the highest number were from the Seville mint. The Madrid and Segovia mints came in second and third.
Below is an excerpt from the same study talking about how the cut pieces were so often underweight. Only three percent of the cut half bits were of their full fair weight.
Did you notice that the cut piece found by Scott was not cut on the cross (lines) and is short of a quarter of the original coin?
Of course, it is possible that it was intentionally cut in fifths rather than fourths.
There are just so many details in the study that I referred to it again and suggest it as recommende reading. Here is that link once again.
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Russia, Russia, Russia! Try it one more time. The election is gettng near, and the Chinese assets in the FIB like that one.
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| Sourcea: nhc.noaa.gov. |
Lots going on now. Look at that busy map.
The surf is a little higher this week and we are still having good high tides.
Good hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net