Pedro Damián Cano Borrego is a Doctor en Historia y Arquelogía at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and president of the European section of the Unión Americana de Numismática.

Phil Flemming is a Director of the U S. Mexican Numismatic Association.

He was educated in the US and England, taking an advanced degree in Classical Languages and History. He returned to the US in the early 1970s to teach at several universities including Colgate, Pitt, and Florida Tech.

His interest in Spanish Colonial History developed in the 1980s when many of the original members of the Real 8 Society were his friends or neighbors in Melbourne Beach, Fl. Without the fuel of the rich numismatic finds of the early 1960s, private (and academic) archival work on the 1715 Fleet had largely stalled. To revive interest in research and establish a permanent research organization took more years than Phil anticipated, but in 2008, with the tercentennial of the loss of the Fleet approaching, in co-operation with Ben Costello and Ernie Richards, Phil created the 1715 Fleet Society and began planning a series of biennial international conferences.

The 1715 Fleet Society website (https://1715fleetsociety.com) has become an internationally recognized digital archive of Fleet material, and soon the Fleet Society will be undertaking the publication of several anthologies bringing together the recent work of dedicated Fleet scholars.

Besides archival work, Phil has long been attracted to the discipline of numismatic research. The wrecks of the 1715 Fleet have revolutionized our understanding of Spanish Colonial coinage in the reigns of Carlos II and Felipe V.

Collectors, as well as scholars, now have access to a large corpus of gold and silver coins from colonial Mexico, Peru, and Colombia. Anticipating his publication of two monographs, The Gold Cobs of Mexico, 1679-1733 and The Gold Coinage of El Peru, 1696-1751, much of Phil’s research is already available on his website, https://www.goldcobs.com.

Agustin Garcia Barneche or better known as Augi, is a full-time dealer specializing in Spanish colonial coinage and has been an invaluable member of Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC since June of 2008, where he is the Vice President of International Numismatics. In addition to helping manage each auction, Augi Garcia’s tasks include working with potential bidders, advertising and catalog production (photography, design and numismatic research and conservation) and advising clients on potential fits for their collections.

Augi has been working with colonial material since 2001, and in 2006 he authored the book The Macuquina Code to assist fellow researchers with "numismatic and colonial" terms that appear in Spanish. Augi's latest work The Tumbaga Saga: Treasure of the Conquistadors, (2010) is about the silver treasure bars manufactured during the conquest of Hernán Cortés (a second edition was released in 2018 and the Spanish edition in 2019).

He is also a member of the American Numismatic Association, American Numismatic Society, International Association of Professional Numismatists, and Florida United Numismatists, and holds an associate degree in visual communications/graphic design.

Alberto Francisco Pradeau Avilés was born in Guaymas, Sonora, on 15 May 1894, to French parents. He received his primary education in his home town and his secondary education in Alamos, Sonora. He migrated to the United States in 1916 and attended high schools in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of Southern California College of Dentistry in 1923, specializing in oral diseases. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in November 1931.

Although Pradeau maintained a highly successful and lucrative dentistry office near Los Angeles, California, he spent much of his life investigating and writing the history of northern Mexico. His second specialty and all-consuming hobby was numismatics. He was awarded the American Numismatic Association's Medal of Merit in 1969 for his contribution to the American Numismatic Association and to numismatics. The Medal read "There can be no separation of your name from the study of coins from our neighbor to the south, Mexico ... Your Numismatic History of Mexico, published in 1938, has been and still is recognized as a standard in the field."

At the age of 82 and recognized nationwide as the Dean of Mexican Numismatics, Pradeau was summoned to Florida in 1976 to authenticate Mel Fisher's 1971 discovery of the cargo of the sunken Spanish galleon, the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. Pradeau later said that "[i]t was one of the of the most exciting events of my life to see and test the find from the Atocha." His painstaking 10-day efforts were rewarded when the treasure was authenticated and found to be worth millions of dollars.

Pradeau published the following works on numismatics:

The Mexican Mints of Alamos and Hermosillo, in 1934.
Numismatic History of Mexico from the Precolumbian Epoch to 1823, in 1938.
Don Antonio de Mendoza and the Mint of Mexico in 1543, in 1953.
Numismatic History of Mexico from 1823 to 1950 in four volumes.
Sonora and its mints: Alamos y Hermosillo, in 1959.
Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico: the French Intervention, its History and that of its Coinage, 1864-1867, in 1970.

Pradeau died on 29 July 1980 in Los Angeles, California. He donated his collection of coins to the city of Hermosillo and his papers now form the Alberto Francisco Pradeau Collection in the Arizona State University Library. This collection  houses correspondence, typescripts, transcriptions, translations, photocopies, photostats, and printed matter documenting Pradeau's research on colonial and nineteenth century Mexican history and currency.

Allan Schein is the author of Mexican Beauty / Belleza Mexicana; Un Peso Caballito, which won NLG Best World Coin Book 2015, and the Sociedad Numismática de México’s Alberto Francesco Pradeau Award, 2016, and of The $2.50 & $5 Gold Indians of Bela Lyon Prat (which won the NLG Best U.S. Coin Book 2017. His "Identity of Pratt's Indian", in The Numismatist, November 2017, won the NLG Best US Coins 1901 to Date Article and the ANA Heath Award. Both PCGS and NGC use the Schein varieties on Caballito overdate slabs, and Allan has the all time and current #1 PCGS Caballito Peso registry set.

Allan is a member of the Jack Young eBay "Darkside" counterfeit removal team and a specialist for the Anti Counterfeiting Task Force and the Numismatic Crime Info Center.

Otherwise, he is a former triathlon and endurance athlete; an 8th Dan Black Belt, Jido Kwan Taekwondo; 6th Dan Kukkiwon, Belted Shotokan, JKA and co-author of Taekwondo Basics, Techniques & Forms, 2006.

Cori Sedwick Downing began her coin career in 2007 when her brother, Daniel, opened his numismatic auction company; however, her exposure to the coin world started much earlier when her father, Dr. Frank Sedwick, started his numismatic ventures in 1981. Now Cori is the Vice President of Operations and a researcher for Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC. She has been in many businesses over the years but has always enjoyed history and research. She is a graduate of Duke University (1979), with an A.B. in comparative literature, and speaks Spanish. She is a member of the Florida United Numismatists.

Cori’s special numismatic projects have included cataloging early Spanish colonial coinage, particularly the first mints of Mexico City, Santo Domingo, and Lima. She has given presentations on her research on the Mexico City coins minted under Charles and Joanna and has a book forthcoming on the Early Series coinage. In 2013 she won the Numismatic Literary Guild’s Extraordinary Merit Award for her article “The Charles & Joanna Coinage of Mexico City, 1536-71: A Research Study on the Early Series and Introduction to the Late Series.” Cori also assists the company by managing the auctions and office and by researching other special coins and artifacts.

Daniel Frank Sedwick is a Director of the US Mexican Numismatic Association.

Daniel is a full-time dealer specializing in the colonial coinage of Spanish America as well as shipwreck coins and artifacts of all nations and founder and President of Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC. Daniel Sedwick has been a licensed Florida Auctioneer since 2007. In addition to publishing several online and auction catalogs per year, Mr. Sedwick is a regular vendor at major international coin shows in the US, including FUN, CICF, Baltimore Expo and ANA.

Until early 1996 Daniel worked in partnership with the late Dr. Frank Sedwick, who began the business in 1981 and became known as a pioneer in the field of Spanish colonial numismatics with his book The Practical Book of Cobs. The fourth (2007) and third (1995) editions of this well-known book were authored and co-authored by Daniel, who is also a contributing editor for Krause-Mishler’s Standard Catalog of World Coins “century editions” and The Numismatist (the monthly magazine of the American Numismatic Association) and the author of several articles. In addition he has been the editor for several important books in the field including: Roberto Mastalir's The Great Transition at the Potosí Mint 1649-1653 Volumes I & II (2015); the second edition of Emilio Paoletti’s 8 Reales Cobs of Potosí (2006); Jorge Proctor’s The Forgotten Mint of Colonial Panama (2005), and Krause-Mishler’s Spain, Portugal and the New World (2002).

Daniel is a member of the American Numismatic Association, American Numismatic Society, Florida United Numismatists and current President of IAPN (International Association of Professional Numismatists), and holds a B.S., cum laude, in Physics and Russian, from Duke University (1989).

Ricardo Vargas Verduzco is a Mexican numismatist born in Zamora, Michoacán in February 1984. He started collecting coins when he was eight, and after a few years he specialized his collection and field of study on his birthplace, Michoacán.

He has written articles for journals including ones published by USMexNA and Sociedad Numismática de México, where some of them had been awarded as best articles in their respective category.

On 2023, Ricardo published his first book Enciclopedia Numismática de Michoacán Vol.1 Monedas Municipales (Michoacan Numismatic Encyclopedia Vol. 1 Municipal Coins). This is the most complete, detailed, and precise book of Michoacan municipal coins where varieties and counterstamps are documented in a full color book. This is the first volume of the encyclopedia, a titanic job that Ricardo has been working on, trying to document every single piece of numismatic item including medals, notes, war of independence issues, bonds and even tokens.

Ricardo has been a very active numismatist, in 2023 the Sociedad Numismática de México awarded him for “His contribution to the Mexican Numismatics both México and abroad.”

He is member of the USMexNA, SONUMEX and Founder Member and Treasurer of the Sociedad Numismática de Guadalajara, the numismatic organization of his place of residence. He can be reached at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.