Mexico City, Mexico, pillar 8 reales, Philip V, 1732F, very rare first year of in Winter Park, FL

Mexico City, Mexico, pillar eight reales, Philip V, 1732F, very rare 1st year of issue. KM-103; CT-774. 26.7grs. The traditional trophy of the Mexican pillar dollar series is the rare 1st year, 1732, which was an incredibly difficult date to acquire before they began to be found on several different shipwrecks starting in the 1960s-70s. The purists still prefer non-salvage pieces, as do the US colonials collectors who see it listed in the "redbook" as legal tender in the US till 1857. A coin with toning and evidence of circulation is still considered more desirable to these collectors than a lightly corroded but technically UNC piece from a wreck. The former is much harder to get, which is why the present specimen is worth special attention despite some light spots and crude old etching around information near the top that, when combined with its pedigree, may be evidence of use as a Spanish-American War military decoration of some sort. For grade this coin ranks a solid XF, boldly struck for a 1st-year issue, the rims somewhat swallowed up by the flan's small diameter. But it is the toning--that deep, rich, elegant badge of age--that draws even the pickiest collector to this coin, with a pedigree that traces its ownership back more than a century. Pedigreed to the Dan Holmes collection, with letter from Jacinto Diaz, the grandson of the original owner, a Royal Spanish Navy seaman who acquired it in Cuba during the Spanish-American War (1898), also with a digital enlargement of a photo of Diaz with his father and mother and the future King Juan Carlos I at a 1955 reception for families of Spanish-American War veterans.Listing originally posted at http