Boxed Toned Set giveaway with a twist. *Winner posted*

TwoKopeiki

First - the prize. Great-looking toned Canadian set (original box included) that would look great in any collection:









Now, for the rules of the giveaway:

To enter, post an interesting fact about any of the following topics:

1. 8 Reales, it's use by Spain, colonies, or other Countries, circulation, characteristics, peculiarities.
2. Anything relating to the minting of the milled coinage in the late 18th Century, early 19th Century using manual screw presses.
3. War of Independence in Mexico.
4. A particular piece of 8...

Example: "The coinage of New Spain and Mexico runs into billions, and their pieces of eight and pesos served as the standard medium of exchange in the United States, the Philippines, China, and many European markets. The first, or Continental currency of the United States of America, was made payable in Spanish milled dollars. The Mexican peso and its subdivisions were legal tender in this country until February 21, 1857, when by Act of Congress, all laws authorizing its circulation and acceptance were repealed. Up to June 30, 1862, the sum of $2,103,275.74 in Mexican coins had been accepted by the United States Federal offices."

One interesting fact gets you 1 entry; 5 facts = 2 entries; 10+ facts = 3 entries.

The winner gets picked by random number generator on Sunday (November 18th).

Good luck!

The winner is Ajaan!

RareBronzeCollector

At one time, you could get a "Shave & a Haricut" for "2 Bits" or 2 bits of a piece of 8..... ie: 25 cents ...... Hence the term 2 bits being used for a quarter.......


Just to get the ball rolling..........

Thanks for the opportunity....... ( it would go nicely with the gold proof set)..... And I LOVE the designs....

ajaan

OK, I'll give it my feeble attempt.

Napoleon can be given some credit in helping Mexico in her War of Independence. Since Spain was at war with Napoleon's French government*, Spain was somewhat distracted form what was going on in its colony.

* Spain was also an ally of Napoleon at one time, but that's another matter.

Hey, I said it was a feeble attempt.

dan8402

1. In the 13 original colonies the 8-reales coin was popularly referred to as a milled dollar. Considering the Royal Mint did not provide the necessary coins needed for local commerce the American colonies used any foreign specie available. The Spanish milled dollar was typically what was available.

2. With inferior quality cobs being minted at most mints in the Viceroyalty of Peru, laws were finally passed in 1728 and 1730 mandating modern minting techniques be employed. Possibly to make up for the added costs associated with acquiring and sustaining the new more expensive technology, the coinage was slightly devalued with the eight reales reduced in weight and fineness to 417.6 grains at .9166 fineness. In 1732 the Mexican mint came into compliance with the new regulations and stopped producing hammer struck cobs. They began minting an improved product on a screw press.

3. Milled bust coins were legal tender in the United States until 1857.

4. The Spanish King Philip V (1701-1746) introduced milled coinage in 1732. This was to counter widespread 'chipping" of cob-type hammered coins.

5. The new design used a screw press that worked by rotating a weighted lever. It pressed an upper and lower die together on a blank planchet and with the intense and even pressure of the press, the planchet would be evenly and fully struck. Also, all coins would be of the same thickness. Quality was supervised by two assayers, with both adding their initial to each coin. (The (macuquina) cobs were used to be supervised by only one assayer).

6. The design on the obverse of the coins, represented the crowned Pillars of Hercules and the crowned hemispheres of the Old and New World floating on the sea, and the legend PLUS ULTRA, which means "further beyond", on the scroll the twines on the pillars. It also depicted the Spanish colonial domination of both Old and New World with the latin inscription -- "VTRAQUE VNUM", meaning the union of two worlds.

On the reverse side of the Silver coins,the crowned Coat of Arms of Spain, along with the Latin legend "PHILIP-V-D-G-HISPAN-ET- IND-REX" (Philip V - By the grace of God; King of Spain and the Indies.)

7. Something I definitely didn't know... Cobs were used in the Spanish Colonies, and all excess, was sent to Spain in this form. When the cobs reach Spain, they were melted down, and re-issued as perfectly machined, stamped coins. The colonies were not allowed to make gold coins. Therefore, all of the gold paned in Tierra Firme, was smelted into gold ingots, and shipped to Spain in this form. They made all of the gold coins in Spain, and the gold coins needed by the colonies was shipped back to the colonies.

8. According to some historians, the struggle for Mexican Independence was re-ignited in December 1650 when an Irish adventurer by the name of William Lamport, escaped from the jails of the Inquisition in Mexico, and posted a "Proclamation of Independence from Spain" on the walls of the city. Lamport wanted Mexico to break with Spain, separate church and state and proclaim himself emperor of New Spain. His ambitious idealist movement was soon terminated by Spanish authorities and Lamport was re-captured and executed by burning.

9. In 1821, Spain recognized Mexico's independence with the signing of the Treaty off Cordoba.

10. The 8 Reales represented the largest denomination for the Pillar coinage series. These crown-size coins were approximately 37 to 41 millimeters in diameter and weighed around 417.6 grains (27.059 grams). It carried a silver fineness of .916. This fineness was a little devaluation from the old .930 carried by the old cobs. This 'devaluation' was possibly made to offset the increased cost in the manufacture of these coins.

Edited to add more... I will continue to add some more if I can find anything else interesting, but I'll give others a chance too

newsman

Speaking of Napoleon, in 1807, when the French invaded Portugal, the Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil, which became the seat of what was then known as the "United Kingdom" of Portugal and Brazil. To counter a shortage of money -- and provide for the royal treasury -- the Portuguese began counterstamping Spanish colonial 8 reales coins as 960 reis pieces, popularly known as a "patacao," at the mint in Minas Gerais. Since the 8 reales then had a value of about 800 reis, this proved a very profitable operation.

In 1810, the first 960 reis coins for circulation were overstruck on 8 reales coins -- and others, including some U.S. silver dollars. This continued after independence until 1834. About 6.45 million such coins were struck at the Bahia mint in Salvador and 16.14 million in Rio de Janeiro, mostly over Spanish colonial 8 reales from various mints, most commonly Potosi, Santiago, Lima and Mexico City.

Here's one where the date and mint can clearly be seen -- it's an 1810 Bahia mint 960 reis overstruck on an 1809 8 reales from Santiago:

dan8402

Double post...

pendragon1998

Thanks for the chance:

1.
Today the term peso is sometimes used interchangeably to include the historic Spanish eight real coin. This is primarily because pesos were of similar weight and diameter to the eight real coin. However the term peso did not appear on Spanish coinage until 1864, and it is more accurate to refer to the older coinage as the eight real coin, which was also called the Spanish dollar or colloquially "a piece of eight."

2.
The pricing of equities on U.S. stock exchanges in 1/8 dollar denominations persisted until the New York Stock Exchange converted to pricing in sixteenths of a dollar on June 24, 1997, to be followed shortly after by decimal pricing. The 1/8 dollar divisions were a legacy of the use of "pieces of eight."

3.
In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, Long John Silver's parrot had apparently been trained to cry out, "Pieces of eight!" This use tied the coin (and parrots) to fictional depictions of pirates. In Terry Pratchett's "Going Postal", Reacher Gilt's parrot cries out "twelve and a half percent!" as a parody of Long John Silver's parrot.

4.
Before Matthew Boulton, coins were essentially struck on
the manual screw presses. Blanks were fed by hand one at
a time. I won't say it was a slow process, I was amazed
to learn they could strike as many as 20 to 30 a minute!,
as several men swung the arms of the screw press around
and back while the "coin setter" retrieved the struck coin
and inserted the next blank. Boulton took his partner James Watt's invention, the steam engine, eliminated the men swinging the arms and
applied steam power to the screw press.

5.
Charles Bushnell, a contemporary, quotes an older letter, describing the process of minting on a screwpress circa 1786 (Excerpt from Photograde 18th ed.):

"In the middle of the room was a wooden box or a pit sunk in the floor several feed deep, in the middle of which pit was placed an iron die, the top of which was about level with the floor of the room. A workman sat on the floor with his legs inside the pit. He placed the smooth coppers on the die, and when stamped [by the upper die coming downward], brushed them off the die into the pit. The impression on the copper was made by a screw-press which was worked by two men, one at each end of an iron bar or horizontal lever, attached to the screw at the center of its length, which was about nine or 10 feet long...the copper when coined was put into kegs and sent off."


6.
Captain John Phillips was the captain of the Revenge, who also set a code for his men in 1724;

Article III: If any Man shall steal any Thing in the Company, or game, to the Value of a Piece of Eight, he shall be maroon’d or shot.

Article VIII: If any Man shall lose a Joint in time of an Engagement, shall have 400 Pieces of Eight ; if a Limb, 800.

Resplandor

Due to the slow communications between Spain and Mexico there are Posthumous: The King died the previous year and Transitional: The King died and when word reached Mexico the dies for the new King were prepared in time so that coins could be struck that same year. In other words there are Pillars struck in 1747 for both Philip V and Ferd VI and 1760 for both Ferd VI and Charles III.
The crowned Pillar Dollars were struck in the New Spain from 1732 to 1771 and after that came the bust type.
In the war for independence Guadalajara was the only provisional mint that struck gold coins for the royalist during 1810-1821.
The Guanajuato mint was only operated by the Royalists for one year (1813). In 1821 Guanajuato was captured by Genaral Bustamante and the mint was re-opened. Coins were struck with designs of the Spanish Colonial design and dated 1821. In 1822 Mexico was free, but until coinage of the Iturbide type was possible Guanajuato continued to strike Spanish Colonial coins with the portrait of Ferdinand VI.
Don Antonio de Mendoza arrived in Mexico on November 14 1535 and by April 1536 he had a mint in operation striking silver coins (hand hammered) also the first assayer of Mexico was Francisco del Rincon. The first coins were Karolus y Iohana. Later this was changed to Carolus y Iohana.

Rickc300

Cob coinage was made at the first mint in the Americas in Mexico City, established in 1535. Hern n Cort‚s was authorized by a Spanish Royal Decree dated 14 September 1519 to melt, cast, mark and put aside the royal-fifth of the gold and silver being collected from the Aztecs in Mexico City (Tenochtitlan). He used the palace of Axay catl (father of Moctezuma II) for the task. This may be considered the first foundry of New Spain and of all North America.

In 1732, the Mexico City mint started producing milled coins. They are called "milled" because the planchets were cut from rolled (or milled) silver. The planchets were round and flat as opposed to the cob planchets. These were stamped with hand cranked screw presses like the one illustrated on the KM# M49a troy ounce silver coins.

The coins minted until then technically, are called cob coins, because they were originally made by hand stamping "tail ends of bars" or "cabos de barra", which were sliced as planchets from rudely cast, more or less round, bullion bars which were assayed and carefully weighed. "Cabo" might well have given us the name of cob, although it does mean a lump or small mass (as of coal).

The English colonies of America were prohibited by royal law from coining, minting, or even so much as using coins. The colonists were supposed to ship any and all coins to Mother England in payment for manufactured goods. The English Colonies decided to use paper money which served them well until they attempted to finance the Revolutionary War with it. By 1780, this form of currency became useless and worthless and the money called Continental Currency collapsed. Immediately, part of the vacuum was filled by the milled Spanish-American silver issues based on the real system in denominations of 1/8R through eight-reales. The most widely circulated of these was the piece of eight, which, when supplies of smaller denomination coins dwindled were chopped or cut into smaller pieces to make change.

When making plans for a monetary system, the United States considered using one similar to the real system. This was because it was the most common system used in the USA at the time, and was familiar to most citizens. A system based on the piece of eight was agreed to and renamed “dollar” in the 1780’s. It was not until 1792 that the system became law in the USA. The introduction to the decimal system divided the piece of eight into one hundred parts (or cents) and became standard coinage. The US mint act of 1792 provided for the first United States Mint, which was set up in Philadelphia.


Many, many, many thanks to Mr. Leon F. McClellan for the research I used from his article:

TWO-BITS, FOUR-BITS, SIX-BITS, EIGHT...

MSD61

Thanks for the chance!

2. Anything relating to the minting of the milled coinage in the late 18th Century, early 19th Century using manual screw presses.


The early modern period witnessed probably the most dramatic change in methods of coin production. Around 1550, the German silversmith Marx Schwab invented coining with the screw press. The novelty was that two heavy iron screws pressed the coin metal to the desired thickness. The preparation of blanks was aided by roller-mills with produced uniformly thick strips from which the blanks could be cut with metal punches. Henri II (1547-1559) imported the new machines: rolling mill, punch and screw press. 8 to 12 men took over from each other every quarter of an hour to manoeuvre the arms driving the screw which struck the medals. Henri II came up against hostility on the part of the coin makers, so the process was only to be used for coins of small value, medals and tokens. In 1645 it came into general use for minting coins.

Enter now the prolific Jean Warin, one of the great engravers, finally established the use of the fly press, a variation on the screw press in which the helix angle of the screw was much increased. The rotational arms ended in heavy weights that were swung with great velocity by two operators (working for only 20 minutes in each hour), and the elasticity of the system caused a rebound of the arm to its original position after the coin had been struck. Again, with a team of moneyers, a rate of production of a coin every second or so could be achieved. In some Russian mints of about 1800 a guided dropping weight functioned in much the same way, regaining its original position partly by rebounding and partly by operators pulling on return ropes running over pulleys.

Screw and fly presses were soon replaced by the power of the steam coining press demonstrated in 1797 when Boulton and Watt used their press to strike Britain’s first copper pennies. Each was a solid copper disc of one ounce – sharply and evenly struck beyond any coinage produced anywhere. They followed this up with a two ounce two penny piece that immediately became known as a “cartwheel”.

WWW

Very nice giveaway, Roman. The dollar looks superb.

I don't know much about 8 Reales except that you now have the only two I ever owned.

Hussulo

Ok its before the late 18th Century, early 19th Century, but I though you'd find it interesting.

In 1639, Pierre Blondeau demonstrated a successful machine to France's Louis XIII, and Louis "banished hammered coins from his mint forever" in 1645. In 1661 the King gave the order for Thomas Simon to go to France to obtain the services of Pierre Blondeau and his new screw press machines. After many years of obstruction, Blondeau was finally allowed to mint English coins with reeded edges in 1663. This was to prevent counter fitting and clipping (which was rife amongst hammered coins).

Picture of a screw press:


Thanks for the chance. Its a lovely set.

Bailathacl

A few things of interest caught my eye regarding Father Miguel Hidalgo, often considered the founder of the Mexican Independence movement. Like any good revolution, it had its roots in both social and economic matters. Father Hidalgo exploited the class frustrations of the "indegenas", the indigenous peoples who fared poorly in the Spanish class heirarchy. This occurred simultaneously with growing restlessness among the "criollos" middle class regarding the economic costs of Spanish royalist rule. Father Hidalgo was not fully with the church program, insofar as he led a major military revolt and apparently preached a form of "liberation theology" that allegedly promoted fornication. (Sign me up, Padre.) Along with other major revolt leaders Allende, Jiminez and Aldama, Hidalgo was executed -- for heresy -- in the summer of 1811. The decapitated heads of the four were posted on the four corners of the Alhondiga des Granaditas in Guanajuato (Mintmarks G, Go) as a gruesome warning to would be revolutionaries.

Coinguy19

What I found interesting is that Filipinos actually played a large role in the Mexican War of Independence, and two Filipinos became brigade commanders in the army of General Jose Maria Morelos in the state of Guerrero in the Pacific Coast of Mexico from 1810 to 1821.

rah1959

Nice looking Canadian coins! Please toss my name in the hat.

Hope the below qualifies me.....

Here is some neat info I have learned about the wording on the 8 Reales coin I have coming from you earlier kind giveaway.

I ahve never owned nor knew one thing about these......I really enjoyed learning about it.

Obverse
FERDIN[ANDUS] VII DEI GRATIA 1819 "Ferdinand VII by the Grace of God, 1821." Right profile of Ferdinand VII with cloak and laurel wreath.

Reverse
HISPAN[IARUM] ET IND[IARUM] REX P[OTOSI] 8 R[EALES] P J "King of the Spains and the Indies, Potosi [City Mint], 8 reales. P.J. [Pedro Martin de Albizu & Juan Palomo Sierra] Assayers" Crowned Spanish arms between the Pillars of Hercules adorned with PLVS VLTRA motto.

agentjim007

click smiley

direwolf1972

<< <i>
4. A particular piece of 8... >>



Dont know if this counts but I once found a piece of 8 walking thru a recently plowed field in my hometown. I was about 12 years old. It was a holed coin and in only about good or maybe a little better condition. But to me at the time it was a very grand feeling flipping it in my hand and wonder who had worn it. How long ago it was lost. Why it was in a field in KY. I remember it was a 179x (thinking 1796) coin but my brother stole it several years ago. He has a habit of that and sometimes after years I've been able to get something back from him. Still trying to get my mother to find out if he has it

Anyway thats all I know about pieces of 8.

TwoKopeiki

Some great information in here! I've always been amazed by the speed of production on the old screw press.

Tomorrow the winner will be selected. Still chance to increase your number of entries.

olmanjon

Great giveaway Roman. I don't qualify because I know next to nothing compared to these ofther fellows. I would just like to thank you for all of the 8 reales and 2 reales that you have given away.

TwoKopeiki

Thank you for all the entries. I tallied-up the entries and assigned numbers, representing each. Beating all possible odds, the random number generator picked Ajaan.

Congratulations, Don.

ajaan

Hey, thanks Roman.

TwoKopeiki

Don't thank me, Don - thank this website that ranked your entry as #1. Congratulations I'll have it out in the next couple of days, along with that Churchill.

Thanks to everyone else for your entries - some awesome information in this thread!