Shipwrecks and Mexican Coins

by Daniel Sedwick

Time has shown that shipwrecks are not only a major source for quantities of Mexican coins but are also the best place to find the choicest specimens, particularly for cobs. This last statement is probably a shock to anyone who has collected for many decades and can recall when shipwreck coins were generally shunned for their etched or corroded surfaces. But nowadays the supply of coins from shipwrecks cannot be ignored, and in fact it has added tremendously not just to market values but also to general Mexican numismatic knowledge. However, this source is currently threatened and needs to be supported by the numismatic community at large.

Record holders

The highest auction price realized in Mexican coins is for a shipwreck coin! The honor goes to the unique 1695 8 escudos Royal that sold in Aureo’s “Caballero de las Yndias” sale (lot 328) in April 2009 for 380,000 Euros, which amounts to about $580,000 after conversion and fees. This gorgeous coin first came to light in Henry Christensen’s “Ubilla-Echevez” sale of 1964, which was the first of several auctions of finds from the Spanish 1715 Fleet off the east coast of Florida. However, this first auction had a little twist in that Christensen could not call it 1715 Fleet due to first media rights granted to National Geographic for their famous January 1965 article, “Drowned Galleons Yield Spanish Gold.” While it is doubtful that the coin’s origin was the main reason for its record price in 2009, certainly there were more bidders than in 1964 specifically because of the interest in shipwrecks in general.

It would be logical to guess that the “runner-up” coin is another perfect gold 8 escudos Royal from the 1715 Fleet, but in fact it is a silver coin, the Charles-Joanna 8 reales of assayer Rincón, struck in 1538 and extant in the form of just three specimens from a single wreck-find, the best of which sold in Heritage in January 2006 for $373,750. It is easy to see why this coin set a record, as it was the finest-known specimen of what was effectively the first silver dollar struck in the Americas, an honor that was previously bestowed on the Rincón 8 reales of Lima, Peru, choice specimens of which have also sold in six figures. It is no exaggeration to say that these three Mexican 8 reales from a shipwreck find changed the numismatic landscape. Unfortunately, like with so many shipwreck finds, we do not actually know the name or exact location of the source wreck, but we call it the “Golden Fleece wreck” because it also yielded some ingots that had an important and interesting Charles V tax stamp showing the Golden Fleece. Based on the ingots we believe it sank around 1550, and the divers say it is somewhere in the northern Caribbean. Now before you think “what a shame this wreck was not officially salvaged with archeological methods,” keep in mind that the wreck could very well be in the waters of a country that would never undertake salvage, let alone hire an outside company to do it, and then we would never know about the existence of these coins!

Starting from the famous Rincón 8 reales, let us examine the shipwrecks that yielded Mexican coins by type.

Charles-Joanna coins

The aforementioned 8 reales is from a design series usually referred to by the Spanish king and queen (mother and son) under whom they were struck: Charles and Joanna (“Carlos y Juana” in Spanish). This earliest type of coinage from the New World, struck from 1536 to 1571 or 1572, shows the Pillars of Hercules on one side and the arms of Castile, León and Granada on the other. Notice I did not call them obverse and reverse, for while technically the arms side should be the obverse, since that is where the legend begins, usually it is the pillars side that gets more attention and appears to the left in photos. There are two main types: one without waves under the pillars known as “Early Series,” and one with waves known as “Late Series.” Overall these coins were designed and struck with some care and expertise, for most of them are well detailed and well centered on round and evenly-thick flans. Indeed they are more like medieval European coins than the cobs that followed. They are popular and beautiful, to the point that they are studied and collected by die details. They are also unique to the Mexican mint.

As we have seen with the 8 reales, shipwrecks are an important source for Mexican Charles and Joanna coins, probably even more so than most people realize, especially for the higher denominations of 2, 3 and 4 reales. What I mean is that these denominations were fairly scarce before the shipwreck coins came around, and they are becoming scarce again, now that the shipwrecks have petered out. Really there are only two shipwreck sources: the previously mentioned “Golden Fleece wreck” of ca. 1550, and the Spanish 1554 Fleet. While the former is unidentified and probably was no more than a chest or two, the 1554 Fleet represents several ships and at least two different source locations.

The main concentration of 1554 Fleet material is off Padre Island, Texas, where three ships were lost in a storm. A fourth ship in the Fleet made it back to Havana. The ships off Texas were eventually salvaged by the Spanish, but not completely, and the fate of the treasure on board the escaped ship is unknown. What is known, by Spanish records, is that most of the shipment did not make it back to Spain, and in fact some of it was later lost off the east coast of Florida. There is also evidence that at least part of the specie cargo went from Havana to Puerto Rico and was possibly lost in another wreck in that vicinity.

The Padre Island wrecks were salvaged in modern times in the 1960s and 1970s, at first by an out-of-state company under controversial circumstances and later under the aegis of the Texas Antiquities Committee, which effectively removed the coins from private hands.

Many coins from these wrecks entered the market before the State of Texas took over, however, and also many coins have been found on the beach, as it seems one of the wrecks was scattered there during an inlet-dredging in the 1940s.

The part of the treasure that was lost off Florida is probably the source of what locals found in the Cape Canaveral area up until the 1960s when the space program put all of it off limits. Whether the locals melted their finds or just never sold them, the fact is that coins with the Florida provenance are rather rare. It is quite possible that they were simply sold without any indication of source. It is unlikely to have been a big find anyway, as there is evidence that the local Indians found much of it and converted it in their own way.

The last part of the 1554 Fleet treasure to hit the market - possibly a slightly later shipment - was found in more recent times off Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. No one knows how the coins and small pieces of silver ingots got there, but the fact is that the coins are identical to the Padre Island finds in terms of assayers and distribution of denominations. In fact, this is a good example of another critical point concerning shipwrecks: Not only are shipwrecks important for coins, but coins are important for shipwrecks, as without the coins most wrecks would be very difficult to pinpoint in time and origin.

Numismatically, the 1554 Fleet finds actually define the time period of rare assayer S LINK history//carlos-joanna/late-series/assayers-1558 in the Charles-Joanna series at Mexico, for coins of that assayer do come from this Fleet but not from the slightly earlier “Golden Fleece wreck,” whose estimated time frame of ca. 1550 is mostly inferred from markings on ingots. The other important aspect of 1554 Fleet coins is the lack of any coins from assayer O or the last period of assayer L (with the exception of some L/S from the Santo Domingo wreck only).

Both the “Golden Fleece” and the 1554 Fleet are also important for yielding the ephemeral 3 reales from the Mexican mint LINK history/carlos-joanna/early-series/assayers-1536-1548/three-reales, a unique denomination that is not available from any other wreck and in fact is largely unavailable as non-shipwreck. To be sure, there are many more wrecks from the Charles and Joanna period out there, yet to be found. Could there be more 8 reales and 3 reales? More assayer-S coins? Only time will tell.

Shield-type cobs

In the late 1500s a new system of planchet-cutting spread throughout the Spanish mints, including (especially) the colonies, which ushered in the type of coins that came to be known as “cobs.” Unlike the typically round and evenly thick Charles and Joanna coins, cobs are much cruder and for Mexico tend toward barrel-shapes and rectangles with blunted points and/or thinly hammered-out middles. Despite their crudeness, these Mexican cobs became a true world currency, trading throughout not just the Americas and Europe but also Africa and Asia. Of course, that meant that these coins were loaded onto ships in huge quantities, and when those ships sank, big portions of that period’s mintage went down with them.

We call these Mexican cobs “shield-type” to distinguish them from the later “pillars-and-waves” cobs that emanated from the South American mints from the 1650s on. The Mexican shield-type design consists of a full Habsburg shield on the obverse and a cross on the reverse with either lions and castles (silver) or fleurs-de-lis (gold) in its quadrants. The silver coins began to incorporate a date, always at 10 to 11 o’clock in the obverse legend, in 1607; gold coins began in 1679 with the date in the same place except for a brief experiment in 1714 that placed the date at the top of the reverse. Primarily it is the date that appeals to serious collectors of Mexican cobs.

With a few exceptions, certain periods of dated Mexican cobs are common and collectible solely because of shipwreck sources. For example, the 1679-80 cobs were virtually unheard of before the Joanna wreck of 1682 was found and salvaged in the 1970s, same for the dates up to 1715 that have come from the 1715 Fleet since the 1960s. These, then, are the major Mexican cob-yielding wrecks in chronological order:

Santiago (1585) and an unidentified ca.-1590 wreck off the Yucatán: These two wrecks are responsible for the great majority of Mexican Philip II cob 8 reales and 4 reales of assayers O and F. Both wrecks yielded coins in fairly nice condition, some that would pass for non-salvage.

“Rill Cove wreck” (ca. 1618): This wreck stands alone as a big source for Mexican Philip III cob 8 reales and 4 reales, assayers F and A. Unfortunately, most of the coins are corroded and/or thin, but they are often found with good contrast from toning. Some people believe, by the way, that this wreck was a pirate ship, for there is no documentation at the time from either the English or the Spanish archives from that period about any loss in that location.

Spanish 1622 Fleet (Atocha and Santa Margarita) and São José (1622): These wrecks are important sources for late Philip III Mexican cob 8, 4 and 2 reales, particularly assayers F and D. A full range of dates from 1607 to 1622 was found. What is neat is that these wrecks have yielded several over-assayer D/F coins with dates other than 1618 when the changeover actually took place. One particularly mysterious and inexplicable date is 1611 D/F.

“Lucayan Beach wreck” (ca. 1628): This wreck yielded almost exclusively Mexican cob 8 and 4 reales, and while there is little variation from late-1620s assayer D, there was one very important earlier coin found - a unique 8 reales Royal of joint assayers F and oD, ostensibly the first Royal of Philip III and preceded by just two known assayer F Philip II Royals.

Concepción (1641): This is an important source for otherwise rare dates in the late 1630s in Mexican cob 8 and 4 reales, most in decent condition but also many with corrosion.

Maravillas (1656), Gilt Dragon (1656), and San Miguel el Arcángel (1659): These are all important sources for 1650s Mexican cob 8, 4 and 2 reales, particularly the dates 1652-58. The Gilt Dragon wreck is yet another lesson in government intrusion, as wrecks in Australian waters are “protected” by laws that I would say are good in spirit but poor in letter. Simply put, it is legal to own coins from this wreck, but only if they are accompanied by certificates from the Western Australian Museum showing that they have been through the recording and conservation process. Here is my question: What happens if the certificate is lost? My colleagues in Australia tell me they simply wait till the periodic amnesty comes along and submit their coins for certification then. Frankly, any law where the best compliance is waiting for amnesty is rather ineffective in my opinion!

Joanna (1682): While the coins from this wreck are typically very worn and corroded, and crudely struck to begin with, they do include many 8 reales with very clear dates 1680 and 1681, which are nearly non-existent outside the wreck. Many of the coins also exhibit very strangely shaped flans.

Spanish 1715 Fleet: This is probably the most important shipwreck for Mexican coins, as it yielded over a hundred thousand Mexican coins, both silver and gold, and filled in many years’ worth of dates and types that were previously unknown.

It all started with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-14), which delayed the annual treasure shipment from the New World to Spain for several years. The result, in 1715, was a combined Fleet of 12 ships that were overloaded and overly delayed into the hurricane season. When the inevitable storm hit, on 30 July, all the ships of the Fleet were wrecked, blown onto the shores and reefs of the east coast of Florida. Even after somewhat successful salvage efforts by the Spanish, some 14 million pesos of official cargo were still missing, with probably an equal amount of contraband also lost.

In the late 1950s a local named Kip Wagner found an 8 reales on the beach during a hurricane and decided to trace the source. With the help of a 1774 map he discovered that the coin came from the Spanish 1715 Fleet, and he went on to locate parts of the wrecksites on the reefs, mainly by flying over in a small plane and spotting the ship-shaped jumbles of ballast stones. With a handful of associates he formed the Real Eight Corporation and recovered many, many coins. These coins were sold at auction throughout the 1960s and 1970s, after which Real Eight disbanded and the various wrecksites (leased from the State of Florida) ended up in the hands of Mel Fisher, who sub-leased the sites while his company searched the Keys for the ostensibly richer Atocha shipwreck. Finds continue to be made by subcontractors, as recently as this summer, in relatively small amounts compared to the Real Eight days. Even the beach itself yields 1715 Fleet coins and artifacts when storms come through.

The coins from the 1715 Fleet include every date and denomination from the Mexican mint from the late 1690s to 1715, including Royals. I like to use the 1715 Fleet as a paradigm of quality as well, for most of its gold cobs are in fact better than their counterparts that spent the last 300 years above the waves. At NGC, for example, all of the Mint State grades up to and including MS 67 are represented among the 1715 Fleet finds. That is right—MS 67! A large amount of the silver coins are exceptional quality as well, including many full dates and rarities.

I will leave the topic of the 1715 Fleet with this interesting observation: It is probably the only wreck for which there are a sizable number of people who collect only coins from that wreck.

Spanish 1733 Fleet: Like the 1715 Fleet, this Fleet was combined and delayed, amounted to many ships sunk, and was contemporaneously salvaged by the Spanish. In fact it was very well salvaged, to the extent that comparatively little was left for modern salvagers from the mid-1900s until 1990, when the Florida Keys Marine Sanctuary was established, making the wrecksites off-limits to salvagers. Now this is a case where the government trouble is not archeological or historical but environmental. Most of the modern coin finds from the 1733 Fleet were cob 8 and 4 reales, many with clear dates from 1730 to 1733 despite sometimes heavy corrosion. Watch out for the gold cobs, however, as practically all of the Mexican gold cobs certified as being from the 1733 Fleet are actually fakes made in the 1960s!

Vliegenthart (1735) and Rooswijk (1739): When it comes to cobs, the finds from these wrecks are virtually identical, as most are minimally corroded and with clear dates from 1730 to 1733 in the denominations of 8 and 4 reales, in addition to a few rare dates in the 1720s. No Mexican gold came from either of these Dutch wrecks, however.

Klippes (1733-1734)

In the years 1733 and 1734 there was a brief experiment in 8 reales and 4 reales only which involved machine-striking shield-type designs onto hand-cut planchets. Without getting too involved in the subject, suffice to say that these ephemeral issues are limited, generally well struck and beautiful, and undeniably augmented in number by the salvage of several important shipwrecks. The Spanish 1733 Fleet mentioned above is one, but the bigger sources tend to be the Dutch wrecks of Rooswijk (1739) and Hollandia (1743). Because these coins are machine struck, quality of strike is a bit more predictable than for cobs, and therefore grade is a much bigger factor in value. While most shipwreck specimens are at least a little bit corroded, the ones that are not corroded look fully Mint State and actually surpass the non-salvage specimens in price, especially with modern methods of chemically cleaning and retoning shipwreck coins.

Pillar dollars

While Mexican cobs started the trend, it was not until the “pillar dollars” of the 1730s to the 1770s that Mexican coinage became a true coin-of-the-realm worldwide. Even the early United States specified that “Spanish milled dollars” were legal tender until 1857. It is little wonder, then, that Mexican pillar dollars have been found in great quantity from the shipwrecks of many nations, particularly Spanish, Dutch, French and British shipwrecks.

The design of these coins is beautiful and unique to the New World, as it was only made at Spanish American mints, showing the Pillars of Hercules around two globes above the date on one side and simplified arms on the other side, a design reminiscent of the Charles and Joanna coins from two centuries prior. Like the earlier coins, there is ambiguity about which side is more important, as the more mundane arms side is technically the obverse by virtue of its legend. While certain errors and overdates and minor varieties command a premium, the whole date-run is easily collectible, but not without the inclusion of several wreck coins, in particular the first two dates, 1732 and 1733 (the latter also with mintmark M.X). I think it is fair to say the majority of the known specimens of these first two dates in the 8 reales come from either the 1733 Fleet or the three Dutch wrecks Rooswijk (1739), Hollandia (1743) and Reijgersdaal (1747). The British wrecks Dodington (1755) and Tilbury (1757) are also known for their Mexican pillar-dollar yields, as is also the French wreck Auguste (1761).

Busts (portraits)

While there is no shortage of Mexican bust (or portrait) 8 reales from the 1770s to the 1810s on the market, the fact is that thousands of the available coins are from shipwrecks. Perhaps the most prevalent shipwreck bust 8 reales right now are from the Cazador (1784), the great majority of which are dated 1783, assayer FF; but some rare and earlier issues were also found, including a few examples of the error date 1872, which previously was not known to exist except in archival citations. (Also it is interesting to note that the 1783 FM assayer variety is absent from the Cazador finds, which indicates that that striking took place later in the year.) Two similar but much smaller sources, with a wider distribution of dates, are an unidentified ca.-1781 wreck in the Chesapeake and the Hartwell (1787). Later coins come from the Cabalva (1818) and from a series of early-1800s wrecks that are not fully identified: one from 1810 off the east coast of Florida, one from the same period in deep water off Bermuda (“Coconut wreck”) and one from around 1811 off Cadiz, Spain.

Bust-type gold tends to be elusive from shipwrecks, with the exception of a few pieces from the 1733 Fleet and some unidentified early-1800s wrecks. Interestingly, though, there is one wreck that would have flooded the market with hundreds of thousands of bust silver and gold coins prior to 1804 — the Spanish ship Mercedes, sunk in 1804 in deep water off Spain — but the salvagers who brought up the coins (Odyssey) lost their legal battle with Spain over the find, and now all the coins reside in a museum in Spain, probably never to be seen in any meaningful way, let alone sold.

This is a good time to bring up the archeological issue again, for it is not just about who controls the salvage — it is also about ownership of recovered treasure. Today the trend is toward disallowing private ownership of any shipwreck finds, which to me is a clear case of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” It is understandable that archeologists and government bodies would like to preserve history and prevent looting, but the fact is that many items found on shipwrecks have little or no importance archeologically, and also many of them are not unique, even within their own wreck. Coins are a great example, for in any given treasure wreck you will have thousands of silver coins that are all identical. Does the local museum need more than a few representative pieces to tell the story? Also, I question how much interest governments and state museums really have in shipwreck treasure. The State of Florida, for example, has one of the world’s best collections of gold cobs, by virtue of divisions with the salvage-lease holders on its coasts; but anyone who visits the museum in Tallahassee can tell you these coins are not on public display, and even legitimate scholars have limited access at best. The fact is that sales of coins and ingots and some non-unique artifacts are what make salvage possible in the first place, and you can believe it is expensive: Odyssey once told me they spend $35,000 per day salvaging in deep water! Does anyone really think that governments will spend that kind of money on shipwreck salvage? The record is against it: In 2000 the government of Spain won the rights to the shipwrecks Juno and La Galga off the coast of Virginia against a salvage company that had a lease with the state and had already begun salvage. Guess what? Spain has not done a single thing to salvage the ships since then. Funny enough, the Spanish government does not seem to have a problem spending money on legal costs, but only because it has proven to be a favorable gamble for them. It is a classic manifestation of the biblical Pharisees or the “dog-in-the-manger” fable, wherein the dog, who does not eat horse food, spitefully keeps the horse from entering the manger to eat! Anyway, I can tell you what will happen if governments around the world do not work together with commercial salvage firms: Coins will still come up, but their provenance will be lost forever.

Mexican Republic coins

The final type of Mexican coins recovered in any quantity from shipwrecks: the cap-and-rays issues of the mid- to late 1800s. Like their predecessors these coins circulated around the world but by their time shipping was far less susceptible to piracy and incompetent navigation or weather prediction. Also, the shipping of these coins tended to have more of a trade or military flavor as opposed to simple transfer of wealth, and of course they had nothing to do with Spanish or Dutch fleets. Where we see these coins is primarily from US shipwrecks or from ships involving trade with the US, and there are a couple whose cap-and-rays coins cross my desk with some regularity: the SS Crescent City (1871) and the USS Charleston (1899).

The Charleston gives me one more anecdote to vent about governmental intrusion, for it was a US Navy ship, and US Naval policy is that their shipwrecks and everything inside them belong to the US Navy in perpetuity (Spain and other countries have a similar policy). The idea is that any military ships are soldiers’ graves, even if no troops were lost on the wrecks. In the case of the Charleston, the US government was powerless because the coins were looted and distributed before any legal action could be taken. But the opposite happened when a US Navy wreck known as the USS Yorktown of 1839 was legitimately salvaged by a commercial company (Arqueonautas) under the aegis of a local government (Cape Verde Islands) and its contents solid in a public forum (Sotheby’s in London), only after which the US Navy threatened legal action and claimed ownership of all the coins and artifacts. The auction house recovered what it could and gave it to the US Navy, leaving the consignor (the salvagers) empty-handed. How upside-down is that? Basically, the system rewards the wildcat diver while penalizing the legitimate tradesmen. Something needs to change.

The evidence is quite clear that shipwrecks are important sources for Mexican coins, and therefore we numismatists must work toward changing the worldwide movement to curtail shipwreck salvage and de-privatize shipwreck finds. It is ironic, but proven, that more coins and knowledge hit the field without government involvement in shipwreck salvage, the exact opposite of what archeologists and bureaucratic opponents of shipwreck salvage hope to achieve. I believe there is a happy medium, a compromise that still exists in some countries that currently work constructively with salvagers: the local government selects important pieces (usually artifacts) and a cross-section of the numismatic finds in return for its oversight and protection, not just from poachers and interlopers but from other governments that hope to claim a part of their past without taking any initiative to recover it in the first place. The fact is that many more Mexican numismatic treasures are still out there, waiting to be found. Let’s make that possible!