Mexico War of Independence - 1814 Zacatecas 8 Reales

TwoKopeiki

Recent inexpensive pick-up from Great Collections. Notoriously crude and weakly struck issue. What I liked about this coin, other than the price, was that you can still see the remains of the die sinker guide lines on the reverse, which gives you an insight into the die production processes back in the day. You can best see it above and below the legend in "8R Zs"

neildrobertson

That definitely seems like a case where the strike significantly limited the grade. Those denticles and details around the edges look at least VF to me.

TwoKopeiki

@neildrobertson said:
That definitely seems like a case where the strike significantly limited the grade. Those denticles and details around the edges look at least VF to me.

Seems like this one was graded a while back when their graders didn't have a lot of experience with W4I coins. The grade would probably come back higher now, not that I would spend money to resubmit something like this.

bidask

the graders should know or otherwise learn

TwoKopeiki

Here's a better view of the guide lines:

MasonG

If you want to see guidelines, check out a Muera Huerta peso.

TwoKopeiki

That's pretty cool, @MasonG Looks like there were some guide lines for rays, too. Do you know if these were punched into the die individually, or as a cap/rays single element?

MasonG

I don't know. If I had to guess, I'd think maybe as a single element with guideline(s) for radial alignment. Again, that's just a guess.

pruebas

@TwoKopeiki said:
That's pretty cool, @MasonG Looks like there were some guide lines for rays, too. Do you know if these were punched into the die individually, or as a cap/rays single element?

I don't know either, but given the woeful conditions in which these were made, I would not be surprised if each die was individually hand engraved without hubs.