1700s Mystery Coin?!

A new client of mine shot me a pic of this coin she inherited from her great grandfather (who once worked at a grist mill!), and I immediately had to stop what I was doing to research it ;)

I didn’t get a pic of the obverse, but wanna take a guess of what it is before reading on??!

My initial thought was that it was a Spanish colonial coin from back in the pirate days, made of silver and from 1757 , but after 20 mins messing around with Google I realized I was barking up the wrong tree as I couldn’t find JACK on it at all. I should have taken the time to decipher the letters around the edge, but I was too impatient so I did what any good coin sleuth would do next:

I cheated and used Google Lens 😎

And, well, within seconds we had our answer!

[It doesn’t always find *the exact* coin you submit, however it usually finds a similar enough one where you can narrow down the search from 0% certainty to around 80-90% ;)]

First, it turns out this coin isn’t silver at all – it’s copper (whoops… sometimes photos can trick you!)

Secondly, that “V” in the middle has nothing to do with the date which is where I got the 1757 from! It’s actually the *denomination* of the coin! Tricky!!

And lastly, it did not originate in Spain, but it did come close :) It’s actually Portuguese.

So what exactly is it??

A 1797 5 Reis from Portugal!

[Image from NGC – my favorite site for foreign coins!]

Now maybe it was still used by pirates – there’s really no way to prove against this, right? – but sadly despite its age and cool factor it’s surprisingly not that valuable :(

According to NGC, in VG condition it’s worth around $3.00, and in XF it’s $50.00 – even though there were only 219,000 made (!!!) making it SUPER rare. But as we all know rarity isn’t the only factor, and in this particular grade (which I would peg around AG due to its wear and roughness) it’s maybe worth $1.00 on a good day.

Still, a fascinating coin. And you could tell it’s had quite a life so far too! Just look at all those dents and scratches and holes its endured! It’s been traded through so many hands over the years, and kinda sad in a way that it’ll now lie at the bottom of someone’s collection collecting dust and no longer being of service to anyone :(

In a way this article is its last hurrah, but at least we got to show it some love for a bit!

At any rate, I’m back to blogging again here as you can see, and I’ll try to make sure my next article shows up before another 12 months have passed 😂

In fact, I see in my drafts that I never actually shared the ending of what happened to all those fake Morgan Dollars I discovered last year!! So I’ll make sure to get that story out first, and will then let you know what else I find in this new collection I’m currently inventorying… So far lots of toned Morgans and a heap of junk silver, but maybe we’ll find a few more mysteries to crack?!

Hope your own coin adventures are going well! See ya back here again soon.

UPDATE: I’ve now received this mystery coin in my hands (my initial research was based on the provided photo up top), and surprisingly the coin is super small and THIN!!! It looked so thick and robust in the pic, so you never really know about some of these guys until it’s actually physically in your hands… The coloring is much darker too – and brown! – which would have immediately led me to believe it was copper and not silver – d’oh.

Here’s a pic from the side, along with the obverse which I also didn’t have to go on initially. Super fun challenge all around though 👍