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Potosi, Bolivia, silver trial strike for a 4 escudos, 1852MF, struck over a La Paz 4 soles (1853), u

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / World Coins - Gold Start Price:500.00 USD Estimated At:500.00 - 1,000.00 USD
Potosi, Bolivia, silver trial strike for a 4 escudos, 1852MF, struck over a La Paz 4 soles (1853), u
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This item SOLD at 2015 Oct 29 @ 12:38UTC-4 : AST/EDT
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Potosi, Bolivia, silver trial strike for a 4 escudos, 1852MF, struck over a La Paz 4 soles (1853), unique and very interesting. 12.90 grams. This strange piece, clearly circulated in its time as a 4 soles (and therefore not a modern fantasy), shows an apparent reverse of a Potosi 4 escudos, with denomination "4E", date 1852, assayer MF, over the reverse of a La Paz 4 soles, which is most interesting because La Paz did not begin striking till 1853 (nor did either mint make 4 escudos in this period)! The obverse shows the overstrike as well, the bust clearly of the style and orientation used on silver and not gold (and certainly not the "bare head" La Paz bust of 1853, under assayer J), with some undercoin visible, the new strike doubled and about 10 percent off-center on the obverse, AVF with toning, crude but reeded edge. The Potosi mint struck a small amount of 4 scudos (same size and weight as a 4 escudos) in 1834 and 1841 only, using two different, right-facing bust styles; both indicated the denomination as 4S, while the larger coins in the same series showed 8S for 8 scudos. In 1851-2 only, the larger gold coin shifted to 8E (8 escudos), with left-facing bust, and thus the half-crown size would have logically become 4E, as is the case on this "trial strike". The bust on this trial-die 4E, ostensibly dated 1852, shows the style of bust and assayers MF commensurate with the Potosi 4 soles (silver) of 1853 (while MF was also the assayer for the Potosi 8E of 1851)! We can only surmise that the mint made trial dies for the half doubloon, with the new designation of 4E, but did not have the facility to actually produce the coins. Apparently, rather than prepare a new planchet to test the dies, they simply took a circulating coin of approximately correct size and slammed the trial dies down upon it. The "host coin" just happened to be a La Paz coin and not Potosi. In any case, this period of Bolivian coinage is known to be chaotic, but this particular Potosi reverse die has not been seen before, making this coin a one-of-a-kind and virtually impossible to evaluate.