ANS talk about the early money of Mexico

pruebas

Congratulations to our own @JesseKraft for his great (virtual) talk today at the ANS.
Dr. Kraft discussed the early money of Mexico, both primitive and the coinage of Charles & Johanna.
Unfortunately, I understand it was not recorded.

I would like to expand upon the comments made about the first 8 Real coinage, however, as they are important to know.

The first 8 Reales were in fact struck at the mint of Mexico in (roughly) 1538 under Charles & Johanna, not under Philip II as commonly believed. There are currently three known examples, all of which have sold publicly at auction over the past 15 years, so images of each are available online.

Some background:
The original 1535 royal decree was for minting of silver 1/2, 1, 2, and 3 Reales. The revised royal decree of 1537 discontinued the minting of 3 Reales and instituted the minting of 4 and 8 Reales. We know that 8 Reales were in fact minted in Mexico because King Charles V sent over to New Spain one Francisco Tello de Sandoval because the King was advised of shenanigans going on at the mint. Tello de Sandoval was tasked to investigate and interviewed mint workers and assayers in 1545(?). His report was recorded in the Archives of the Indies in Spain.

In the 1950s (IIRC), the report of that inquisition was "discovered" (to the numismatic world) by Dr. Francisco Pradeau and was made available to numismatists (translated into English). (I believe the ANS had something to do with that effort, perhaps the translation, so that report is available at the ANS somewhere. If not, I have a copy in my records that I had always wanted to scan and put online.)

In it, mint workers contemporaneously state that they made 8 Reales and that it was a difficult process, fraught with problems, and that they stopped minting them because of that. It was not until the discovery of the "Golden Fleece" wreck (early 1990s) that examples of these coins were actually found and examined. The Goldbergs put out a big press release about the first dollar of the Americas. I remember it on the front page of Coin World in the mid-2000s. I believe they also had the metal analyzed for trace elements of the period.

Here'a a little article by Dan Sedwick summarizing some of the details.
https://coinweek.com/world-coins/new-worlds-first-dollar-treasure-coins/

These three 8 Reales are really the first "dollars" of the New World and as such, very historically important.

bidask

Thanks for the information !

JesseKraft

I'm glad you enjoyed it @pruebas! We had some technical difficulties at the beginning which through me off at little, but overall went okay. Of course, things like that always go different than how you imagined them beforehand.

I must have been going off of outdated information regarding the 8 reales, but is duly noted. The pieces, of course, are extremely important as the first of their kind in the Americas.