Our Treasure of the Month for August is a recent find courtesy of Queens Jewels LLC. This one escudo gold coin (also known as a gold cob because of its crude, hand -made characteristics) is tiny in size but mighty in rarity.
This 1712/1 overdate produced at the Spanish colonial mint in Lima, Peru, is only one of a handful in existence. The relative rarity of one escudo gold coins from the Lima mint cannot be understated. At the end of 1966, the Real Eight CompanyAlso referred to occasionally as “The Real 8 Company”- was incorporated in 1961. It had eight members….Kip Wagner, Kip Kelso, Dan Thompson, Harry Cannon, Lou Ullian, Del Long, Erv Taylor and Lis... prepared an inventory of all 1715 Fleet gold coins found by the Real Eight. In total they recorded 5,622 gold coins of all denominations, mints, and dates found up until that time. Of those only 17 were Lima one escudo. That is an astounding .3% of all gold coins recovered! Currently the State of Florida holds only one Lima 1712 one escudo (FL 11.01680), not an overdate. It is pictured in Craig’s Florida Colonial Gold Coins Plate 7.
It should be noted that most gold coins found on 1715 Fleet wreck sites come from three major Spanish colonial mint sources, Mexico City, Lima, and Santa Fe de Bogota. Of this group (as recorded at the end of 1966) Lima gold coins of all denominations only account for 7.5%, or 420 out of 5,622. Since 1966 these percentages have fluctuated very little. The mintage of the 1712 Lima one escudo reported in Lazo Garcia (who published a three-volume study of Peruvian economics which included year by year mintages of the Lima mint) is a modest 1642 coins. Only four or five are known to have survived, including at least two 1712/1 overdates (the one shown below and our featured coin). Please note this 1712 escudos set pictured here showing the other known one-escudo overdate.
Our featured coin is a gorgeous example of this Lima mint rarity. It is well struck and nicely centered. A truly great, as well as fortuitous, find.
Images courtesy of Queens Jewels LLC and Goldcobs.com. Many thanks to our Vice-President Phil Flemming for his contribution to the text which accompanied these images. For another story about a Lima one escudo see our Treasure of the Month for December, 2018.
