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Mexico City, Mexico, bust 1 escudo, Philip V, 1733/2MF, choice Mint State, finest known example of a

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / World Coins - Gold Start Price:5,000.00 USD Estimated At:5,000.00 - 7,500.00 USD
Mexico City, Mexico, bust 1 escudo, Philip V, 1733/2MF, choice Mint State, finest known example of a
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This item SOLD at 2010 Oct 21 @ 23:03UTC-4 : AST/EDT
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Mexico City, Mexico, bust 1 escudo, Philip V, 1733/2MF, choice Mint State, finest known example of an extremely rare issue, from the 1733 Fleet, and the namesake coin for Meylach's book Diving to a Flash of Gold, encapsulated PCGS MS-63. KM-113; CT-515. 3.4 grams. Lustrous Mint State with fully struck-up details, nice rims except for the top (as struck), curious compass-point dot in center of bust, rare second year of milled gold-coin production in the New World with clear overdate (one of only three known when it was recovered and still the only one in Mint State condition), a spectacular example with a very desirable pedigree, clearly one of the best coins ever recovered from the 1733 Fleet and in fact the inspiration for the title of Marty's book (personally confirmed by him in accompanying letter), and recovered from the Capitana El Rubi during a particularly reckless salvage effort under life-threatening conditions, breathlessly immortalized in Meylach's book (pages 133-4): "For days we sucked away at the sand under the edge of her hull... black residue trickled down from the rotting timbers to mix with the cloud of dust... the blackened wound grew into a yawning pit... the great bulk of the hull towered over our heads... the Capitana stood on a hair's balance... in the gloom of our man-made cavern, we swam as shadows, flitting in and out of the billowing dust cloud... then from the fallout tumbled a single exquisite gold coin... we pounced on it, swam out to the better light... [then] shorn of her treasure... the Capitana made a rumbling, crackling sound and shifted ominously... we backed out frantically, dwarfed by the great hulk... above, one hundred tons of granite came unbalanced... her death roll was majestic... the Capitana teetered on her keel and fell with a grating, tearing sound... a great black cloud roiled up beneath her, and then folded its black shroud over the huge corpse as she plunged sideways into the pit, spewing an avalanche of ballast rock." From the Capitana El Rubi of the 1733 Fleet (stated in slab) and pedigreed to the Marty Meylach collection, pictured in color in his book, with letter from Marty establishing that this specific coin was the "flash of gold" that inspired the title of his book.