754

Popayan, Colombia, bust 8 reales, Ferdinand VII (bust of Charles IV), 1810JF (date altered), Calbeto

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / World Coins - World (A-G) Start Price:2,500.00 USD Estimated At:2,500.00 - 5,000.00 USD
Popayan, Colombia, bust 8 reales, Ferdinand VII (bust of Charles IV), 1810JF (date altered), Calbeto
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This item SOLD at 2014 Nov 06 @ 21:09UTC-5 : EST/CDT
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Popayan, Colombia, bust 8 reales, Ferdinand VII (bust of Charles IV), 1810JF (date altered), Calbeto Plate Coin. Restrepo-120.1; KM-71; CT-589. 26.73 grams. This well-pedigreed coin has a curious modern history. It was first mentioned in 1914, in Adolfo Herrera's El Duro, and it was later cited (as a single-known example) in all the major references, including Dasi (1951), Burzio (1958), Yriarte and López-Chaves (1965) and particularly Calbeto (1970), from whose collection this famous coin journeyed into the hands of two other well-known collectors, Ray Johnson and Siegfried von Schuckmann. When the latter's collection was sold at auction in 2001--at which time this coin fetched $35,000--the cataloger (Cayon) recognized that the piece was one of several suspiciously unique Popayan 8R that appeared in a 1939 Paris auction by Clement Platt entitled Monnaies de L’ Espagne et de L’ Amerique Latine (later determined to have been the Armengol collection), the others being a 1769 pillar and an 1815 bust, and therefore it needed closer inspection. (Interestingly, in the 1939 auction this 1810 piece was "group-lotted" with an 1811 and an 1812; the whereabouts of those other two coins are unknown.) Some technical testing determined that this 1810 coin was genuine but its last digit had been altered (possibly from 1813, based on die details). While otherwise unknown in 8R, the 1810 date is not historically impossible, as Barriga-Villalba does record production of 8R in that year (after a 36-year hiatus at the Popayan mint), and of course there are many known specimens of the 1/2, 1 and 2 reales with that date. Deeply toned Fine with natural flan-crack at top. Plate Coin #942 in Calbeto's Compendium VIII Reales (1970), and pedigreed to the collections of Armengol (Clement Platt, 1939) and Siegfried von Schuckmann (Rennaissance, 2001).