Pre-1656 Maravillas Shipwreck / Mexico Mint 8 Reales Cob Assayer P / with COA

Description

circa1656 Mexico 8 Reales from the Maravillas Shipwreck
Offered is this Sea Salvaged 1634 to1656 Mexico 8 Reales found on the Spanish Shipwreck Maravillas.  This smaller 8 reales coin weighs 10.8 and not a full 27 grams because of being in salt water for nearly 350 years ( exposure to ocean water slowly damages silver coins)
A partial
assayer letter of P is found to the left of the Hapsburg Shield.  Assayer P was Pedro Bercerra who was chief assayer at the Mexico Mint from 1634 to the 1656 sinking of the Maravillas. The original 1991 COA  is from the salvor Herbert Humphreys with the registration number 91-8R-5134. The COA has a matching photo of the coin. A Florenzada Cross is found on the reverse of this Mexico coin.
This Shipwreck 8 reales is listed with No Reserve. This auction has a 30 day return privilege if everything is returned in same condition . A .95 Priority shipping, Insurance, and signature delivery confirmation will be added to the final winning bid. Shipping to the USA only.
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Maravillas
, sunk in 1656 off Grand Bahama Island
As the
almiranta
(“admiral’s ship,” or rear guard) of the homebound Spanish fleet in January of 1656, the
Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas
was officially filled with over five million pesos of treasure (and probably much more in contraband, as was usually the case). That treasure included much of the silver salvaged from the South Seas Fleet’s
Capitana
of 1654 that wrecked on Chanduy Reef off Ecuador (see above). The ill-fated treasure sank once again when the
Maravillas
unexpectedly ran into shallow water and was subsequently rammed by one of the other ships of its fleet, forcing the captain to try to ground the
Maravillas
on a nearby reef on Little Bahama Bank off Grand Bahama Island. In the ensuing chaos, exacerbated by strong winds, most of the 650 people on board the ship died in the night, and the wreckage scattered. Spanish salvagers soon recovered almost half a million pesos of treasure quickly, followed by more recoveries over the next several decades, yet with over half of the official cargo still unfound.
The first re-discovery of the
Maravillas
in the 20
th
century was by Robert Marx and his company Seafinders in 1972, whose finds were featured in an auction by Schulman in New York in 1974. Included among the coins in this sale were some previously unknown Cartagena silver cobs of 1655 and countermarked Potosí coinage of 1649-1651 and 1652 Transitionals, in addition to many Mexican silver cobs and a few Bogotá cob 2 escudos. The second big salvage effort on the
Maravillas
was by Herbert Humphreys and his company Marex in the late 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in two big sales by Christie’s (London) in 1992 and 1993, featuring many Bogotá cob 2 escudos, in addition to more Mexico and Potosí silver cobs and several important artifacts. The most recent sale of
Maravillas
finds, presumably from one of the many salvage efforts from the 1970s and 1980s, took place in California in 2005, again with a good quantity of Bogotá cob 2 escudos. The wreck area is still being searched today, but officially the Bahamian government has not granted any leases on the site since the early 1990s. It is possible the bulk of the treasure is still to be found!