The Curious Case of the 1867 Paraguay 10 Reales
Boosibri
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1867 Paraguay 10 Reales
Relatively little is written about the coins of Paraguay, and even less is known about the enigmatic patterns of 1854-1868. This specific write-up is about the curious case of the 1867 10 Reales, which while classified as a pattern, do not fit the characteristics of the other patterns in the series, nor of a pattern issue in general.
What is known is that Louis Charles Bouvet was commissioned in Paris to design coins for the Paraguayan state. Patterns from those designs were struck in Paris in 1854, 1855, 1864, and 1866. In 1864, the war of the Triple alliance broke out between Paraguay versus Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. In 1867, President Francisco Solano López accepted donations of the gold from the high-class women of Asuncion. On February 24th, 1867 in a meeting the ladies of Asuncion handed over 17 kilos of gold jewelry to the state. Lopez ordered that 1/20th of the donation would be used to mint a commemorative coin. Using a press that had been acquired under the previous administration of Don Carlos Antonio López, the first locally minted coins of Paraguay, the gold 4 pesos were struck in Paraguay from the Bouvet pattern dies. In addition to the gold 4 pesos, 12 copper and 12 silver trials of the 22mm 4 peso were struck. The mintage was small, and the coins were retained by Lopez and given to close associates and family members.
On February 22nd, 1868, the city of Asuncion fell to the Allied forces and the city of Luque was installed as a second capital. On February 25th, a decree was issued in support of providing emergency assistance to the people of Paraguay (document in appendix):
“Considering that the operations of the War have required the evacuation of the population of different districts of the Republic and the need that may be incurred by less well-off families who have been displaced from their domestic home must be foreseen”
Article 1
"The General Treasury of the Republic is hereby authorized to mitigate the evils of the War by helping needy families with public funds, whether in cash or currency."
Article 2
“The same Treasury will provide any other kind of relief that is necessary for the purposes of this provision.”
Article 3
“The expenditures resulting from this decree will be in accordance with the provisions of the Vice-President of the Republic and the amount thereof will be the amount that is necessary.”
Now the curious thing about the 1867 10 Reales, is that every coin is worn, poorly made, and has planchet issues. Why would the officials minting 22mm 4 Pesos in various metals being able to make perfectly good coins now be unable to make 10 reales of similar quality. The 1864 and 1866 10 reales patterns are also well made so the design itself was not an issue. Yet the 1867 issues are uniformly poor. Later in 1868, 2 Reales were minted with again, standard quality. I suspect that the 1867 patterns were made in 1868 in Luque, post the fall of Asuncion. They were minted under the decree of February 25th as emergency issues rather than as the patterns in which they are currently classified making this as a regular issue coin from Paraguay as well clearly the first locally minted silver crown. There is no definitive proof that I can offer of this conclusion, only circumstantial evidence based on the sequence of events from the Great War, and the eroded quality of the 1867 10 Reales compared to all other patterns.
To date, I have found seven examples of the coin with others likely located in the Central Bank Museums in Paraguay and Argentina (which are not digitized). The first documented example dates from the Enrique Pena collection published in 1900. Pena through a series of sales acquired the collection of the eldest Lopez son, Enrique Lopez, which has passed from his father. The series of sales noted below taken from an article by Raul Olazar:
Francisco dead, everything was given to his eldest, Enrique S. López, who at some point needed and sold everything given the situation in which he and his brothers were. So, he transferred that collection of designs to Buenos Aires, part to Mr. Manuel Ricardo Zemborian and part to Dr. Andres Lamas.
In November 1905, by judicial order, all the money and the files of Mr. Lamas were auctioned. A catalog was printed and in it there were several hundred objects, currencies and documents belonging to Enrique S. Lopez. These were acquired at the auction by Enrique Peña and José Marco Del Pont.
The collection was again auctioned in April 24th and 27th, 1972. The auctioneers were the Bulrich of Buenos Aires and the liquidator was Mr. Ferrari, who in payment of his fees chose several coins, including Paraguayan designs and military awards that also belonged to the collection of the Marshal. These were bought by the Fragnoli brothers in Buenos Aires.
When Dr. Ferrari died, the descendants sold part of their collection and four of the important rare designs from Francisco Solano López were bought by Mr. Alejandro Portaluppi and were preserved in his collection.
Link to paper from Olazar: https://www.mascoleccionismo.com/publicaciones/FN_RaulOlazar/FN02v2022_4pesosFuertes1867_RaulOlazar.pdf
Images:
My coin ex MrEureka
The 1867 Gold 4 Pesos
The 1855 Silver Pattern 10 Reales
1868 2 Reales MS65
Census of 1867 10 Reales
Enrique Pena (1900) https://monedasuruguay.com/bib/p/penapy.pdf
Henry Christensen 1972 featuring a better picture of the Pena coin obverse:
Virgil Brand 1964 Schulman lot 3828
1972 Glendining, Thomas Faistauer Henry Christensen 1979
NGC 55, Freeman Craig 3/1982 described inaccurately as ex. Pena, ex. Lustig, now Boosi
Stacks 2011 Lot 20605
Heritage VF30
Unpictured in the Smithsonian
Unpictured in the ANS
Decree from February 25th 1868
Comments
Thank you for taking the time to do the write-up! And congrats on acquiring this significant rarity!
8 Reales Madness Collection
The date on your coin is in a different position from the Stacks coins (#5) and both look hand cut? Or just sloppier compared to the patterns.
At the least it shows there were different die pairs for the 1867 issues.
They hand modified the 1864 & 1866 dies I think.
Latin American Collection
If those are overdates then they’re pretty good ones. Do you see traces of a 6 or 4 under the 7 on yours?
No, I think they had dies with blank final digits which they would have normally sunk the digits properly, but in this case engraved. Similar to their later patterns perhaps:
Latin American Collection
POTD
Doggedly collecting coins of the Central American Republic.
Visit the Society of US Pattern Collectors at USPatterns.com.
What are you calling me? Kidding.
Thanks for selling me the coin and for the hypothesis to pursue.
Latin American Collection
Nice read on the plane to Detroit. Well done @Boosibri
Thanks for the write up Boosibri
Very interesting!
Peace
They may, or may not, have used manual numeral punches to punch the final digits of the date into each working die, rather than engraving them. Would need better magnification to tell for sure. Punching normally leaves some minor doubling from multiple blows from the hammer. Engraving often leaves some stray tool marks.
http://www.victoriancent.com
The Boosi coin and the stacks lot are different obverse dies, not just numerical punches. See the leaves on the outer left sprig. 2nd group up, Boosi coin has 2, Stacks coin has 3. At least it looks that way to me from the images.
A handsome coin, with an interesting history.
Funny, I just learned about the War of the Triple Alliance last night, while descending down one of my Wikipedia rabbit holes.
I was particularly (if admittedly morbidly) interested in the fate of Paraguay’s president Francisco Solano López, who died in battle. Which is not something you see often with the modern president of a republic.
That the war went disastrously for Paraguay is amply demonstrated when you look at the Wikipedia list of its leaders, practically all of whom were either killed, executed, or made prisoners of war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War
I suppose it’s safe to assume that it was not the best time to be a Paraguayan.
Thanks for the numismatic angle on the story. I find it all the more interesting now.
Agreed, they are different dies, as evidenced by the different numeral styles in the dates and other details as well. I suspect Boosi is correct, they used punches (hubs in American terms, a relief tool) with digits of the dates removed to sink working dies (incuse tools). They then finished the dates in the working dies.
Other corrections could have been done to either the punch (hub), or the resulting dies. The working dies may have been done at different times, and either different style manual single numeral punches used, or manually engraving done to complete the dates in the incuse dies. A close examination of the dates may tell us which occurred.
This mint is not my area, but such things occurred regularly at the 19th century Royal Mint. At the Royal Mint, it was nearly always done with manual numeral punches, because it was easier, and not by engraving the dates in the dies. Given the more urgent circumstances, this mint may, or may not, have been different.
http://www.victoriancent.com
B always has something new and interesting. There's a handful of people on this forum that I've learned boatloads of info from. Thank you to B and all the other people who are just as heavily involved with learning, diving deep into the history, and sharing the numismatics of it! Bravo! I know it takes time and can, at times, bite you in the butt, but it makes this place a wonderful place to be!
I'm BACK!!! Used to be Billet7 on the old forum.
POTD
Post of the day is what we have here. And the whole POTD concept started many years ago here. It is not as important to trace back its origins other than to live and recognize what is truly important in numismatics. But for those that are compelled to do so, there are search functions whereby your questions can be answered.
Sadly, I really am unable to recall when a POTD was last awarded. Maybe I should use the search function and find out. My recollection was that it was Darkside POTD so it might actually be DPOTD.
Maybe MrE Deserves a DPOTD for resurrecting the concept of recognizing what is important in terms of what matters… And for the record… to the extent there is one… Boosibri deserves the honor merely to illustrate why this forum exists.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Not my coin any longer but this post got some recognition in the current Sedwick sale.
Latin American Collection