753

Panama, cob 1/2 real, Philip II, assayer oX to right, mintmark AP to left, extremely rare, ex-Sellsc

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Cobs - Other Silver Start Price:4,000.00 USD Estimated At:5,000.00 - 10,000.00 USD
Panama, cob 1/2 real, Philip II, assayer oX to right, mintmark AP to left, extremely rare, ex-Sellsc
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This item SOLD at 2017 Nov 02 @ 18:26UTC-4 : AST/EDT
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Panama, cob 1/2 real, Philip II, assayer oX to right, mintmark AP to left, extremely rare, ex-Sellschopp, ex-Emilio Ortiz, ex-Richard Stuart, Plate Coin in Numismatist and ANE, CT Plate Coin, KM Plate Coin, Proctor Plate Coin. S-AP1; KM-1; CT-721. 1.43 grams. Choice full crown and monogram and cross, XF with lovely toning and very clean surfaces (lacking the usual porosity found on specimens from wetland burial or shipwreck, as this specimen was "discovered in the ruins of Old Panama," according to Proctor), with bold full mintmark and assayer, much legend, holed to right of cross / near top of crown but otherwise much finer than the other known specimen with these dies (lot #1160 in our Auction #7), and notable as probably the most pedigreed 1/2R cob of all time! The oX assayer on this piece is significant also in that this particular coin was scrutinized in the late 1980s to figure out whether (1) the X was the same assayer as on Lima cobs of 1572 (it's not, of course), or (2) the oX was what was meant by an erroneous transliteration of the Panama mint document of 1579 stating the mintmark as "un aspa con hoja encima" (an X-shape with leaf above) as opposed to the correct "una/p/ con una/a encima" (a P with an A above), the extraneous slashes being an attempt (evidently failed) by the original scribe to make the meaning clearer. Pedigreed to the Sellschopp collection (Swiss Bank Corp., September 1988, lot #453), the Emilio Ortiz collection (Swiss Bank Corp., September 1991, lot #33) and the Richard Stuart collection, also Plate Coin in the Gaceta Numismatica (ANE) articles of March 1974 (page 30) and June 1989 (page 60) and The Numismatist article of June 1990 (page 914), also Plate Coin on page 230 of Numismatica espanola (2008) and Plate Coin on page 440 of Spain, Portugal and the New World (2002), by Krause-Mishler, and Plate Coin #HR.1X on page 118 of The Forgotten Mint of Colonial Panama (2005), by Jorge Proctor.