DELETE

PillarDollarCollector

.

PillarDollarCollector

Is there anyone here that can rank them by those 3 periods rarest to least rarest of each denominations?

amwldcoin

In most series my experience tells me the 4 Reales.

WCC

For pillars and Cap & Ray, 4R easily. For Portraits, I'd have to check Yonaka's reference but not that familiar with availability, as I have never bought one of these coins and don't actively look for it.

WCC

@KingOfMorganDollar said:
Is there anyone here that can rank them by those 3 periods rarest to least rarest of each denominations?

Pillars: 4R, 2R and 1R about equal, 1/2R, 8R

Cap & Ray same order in my experience but don't track it that closely. 1/2R might be more available in higher quality for many earlier dates.

Abuelo

All of them have coins that are impossible to locate. You can likely spend your entire life trying to complete any of these series and fail.

PillarDollarCollector

Thanks guys.

WCC

@Abuelo said:
All of them have coins that are impossible to locate. You can likely spend your entire life trying to complete any of these series and fail.

Yes, anyone can confirm this by looking at Rudman's sets in the Heritage archives. He has (or had) a seven or eight figure collection and his pillar sets had a noticeable proportion of lower quality and "details" coins. He apparently did try to complete all denominations by die variety (as listed in Gilboy) but even by date, it's evident that if someone with his resources could only buy what he did, practically everyone else will find it more difficult. In making these comments, I am assuming he made at least a somewhat diligent effort to obtain better or at least "presentable" examples.

The OP did not specifically ask about gold coinage, but it's my inference that these denominations are usually scarcer than the silver. I don't like most colonial portrait designs and haven't tracked it much but assume this by concurrently assuming lower mintages, some possibly very low.

This is my primary explanation for the scarcity of so many Cap & Ray dates. The colonial coinage was all struck with the "Mo" mintmark. There are a dozen mints (or near it as I have not counted) for Cap & Ray. I presume the combined mintage for any year was generally (noticeably) larger, but spread out over so many mints and with a distribution presumably skewed toward Mexico City and maybe a few more, that's why so many have the current scarcity. I only recall seeing mintage data for 8R, not the others.

giorgio11

I think there are actually 14 mints for the Cap and Rays 8 reales, according to Dunigan and Parker, but a couple like Catorce (CE) and Estado de México (EoMo) appear so seldom ...

WCC

@giorgio11 said:
I think there are actually 14 mints for the Cap and Rays 8 reales, according to Dunigan and Parker, but a couple like Catorce (CE) and Estado de México (EoMo) appear so seldom ...

I have not seen mintages except for 8R and not even sure it was all dates. I own an old copy of the guide covering US, Mexico and Canada which I recall had mintages for the later dates.

It's my assumption that some of these coins had really low mintages, maybe as few as a few thousand. So combine this with a very limited (if any) collector base and communication of the time resulted in a (very) low survival. I also assume that this abnormally large number of mints resulted from a combination of plentiful silver supplies and an attempt to have an adequate distribution for commerce.

By comparison, "The Coinage of Peru" includes a brief statement on the shortage of coinage in the colonial era whereas for the pillar coinage, I would not consider the mintages particularly low for the time but it probably disproportionately circulated near Lima and Potosi.

1984worldcoins

The 1984 Mexico Mint specimen set is rare, I am searching for one since 2016.

pruebas

@1984worldcoins said:
The 1984 Mexico Mint specimen set is rare, I am searching for one since 2016.

I have been involved in Mexican coins for 25 years and I have no idea what you are talking about.

ELuis

I guess he is referring to this set:

Those are not easy to find/get, if I recall right.

I still have some 1984 pesos, one 20 cts, 50 cts and 100 pesos left over, that I got as a change, back in that year, that many end up selling as a Kilo...

pruebas

That's called a Bank Set from what I understand.

The coins are not guaranteed to be uncirculated since the sets were assembled at a later date from leftover or returned coins. No specimen quality about them.

Edited to add: I think the Bank did this as a way to make some extra money from collectors instead of melting the coins down after devaluation.

pruebas

By the way @1984worldcoins, here's a 1984 pattern from Mexico.
I would say the pattern series is the toughest series of Mexico to locate.

1984worldcoins

@pruebas said:
That's called a Bank Set from what I understand.

The coins are not guaranteed to be uncirculated since the sets were assembled at a later date from leftover or returned coins. No specimen quality about them.

Edited to add: I think the Bank did this as a way to make some extra money from collectors instead of melting the coins down after devaluation.

Besides that bank sets there some specimen sets too, made by the mint ( in fact I have no idea, these could be bank sets too), I have a few (from 1979 to 1984) but not a very good 1984 one that I could use to grade the coins at a max grade.

1984worldcoins

Here is another type of bank/mint set:

pruebas

@1984worldcoins said:
Here is another type of bank/mint set:

This is not a coin set. It’s a picture of some coins.

pruebas

@1984worldcoins said:

@pruebas said:
That's called a Bank Set from what I understand.

The coins are not guaranteed to be uncirculated since the sets were assembled at a later date from leftover or returned coins. No specimen quality about them.

Edited to add: I think the Bank did this as a way to make some extra money from collectors instead of melting the coins down after devaluation.

Besides that bank sets there some specimen sets too, made by the mint ( in fact I have no idea, these could be bank sets too), I have a few (from 1979 to 1984) but not a very good 1984 one that I could use to grade the coins at a max grade.

By using the word “specimen” you imply that these sets have coins that are special in some way. That is not true. They are coins pulled from circulation.

I believe these sets are privately made. But regardless, they have not survived because the pages are PVC and will eventually damage the coins contained therein.

1984worldcoins

They seem uncirculated, some are in a great condition. Also, in the set ( that absolutely is a set, look closer, some of the coins are embedded in the support ) there are two 50 pesos that look a little bit different and it says S.L.P., what could that mean? In my set there are also two 50 pesos that seem to be made from different metals, one looks like stainless steel.

1984worldcoins

After more research I found out that the coins from this set were minted in three different mints: Legaria, San Luis Potosi and Apartado. Only S.L.P. is working these days. Apparently there is no way to tell where was a coin minted. Here is a better picture of the set sent by my friend Henry Pena ( who has all the modern sets, some , like you said, sold by the bank with left over uncirculated coins) from Mexico City. Below that is another discussion on the same issue:

1984worldcoins

From the official site

PillarDollarCollector

Seems like the 2 reales and 4 reales are the ones I see the least of for sale.