Cobs from a Crook: Rough by Design

Spanish colonial cobs never fail to tell fascinating stories of riches, greed, and heartbreak.
   These stamped lumps of silver come from deadly shipwrecks all over the globe. Others come from caches buried in the ground or hidden in caves. A few pieces have survived as keepsakes stuffed in the back of a drawer. Fewer still were lost in the dirt after a stumble. We are lucky to have them no matter the source, as most cobs were melted to produce new coins.

Here we have 8R, 4R, 2R, and 1R (left to right, bottom) of Ramirez cobs.
The mintmark (P) is left of the shield above the assayer mark (R).

   With their scraggy edges, gnarled surfaces, and partial designs, these survivors entice collectors who enjoy a challenge. Trying to decipher these rugged coins is pure intrigue. Cobs -- with all these "defects" -- are perfect relics.
   Some series of cobs are worse (more perfect) than others -- especially when they were hammered on under-weight flans made of debased silver alloy. It is storyline that is all too familiar.
  This kind of malfeasance was a recurrent problem at the old Potosi mint. It got so bad that the "Peruvians" as they were called were shunned by merchants in the mid-1600s. Cobs with a P  mintmark traded at a discount.
   The cobs from mid-1640s were particularly bad. One of the chief offenders was Felipe Ramirez de Arellano. He was an assayer at the mint who produced cobs from about 1645/6 to 1648. His assayer mark -- a straight-leg R -- is rare, as most of his pieces were melted by order of the king. Some of these cobs were purported to be only 35% silver. Felipe Ramirez was garroted for his sins.
   This group pictured is a denomination set of his pieces: 1 real through 8 reales. They are crudely minted. Ugly. The flat spots and cracks tell a story of a rushed production. The two-reales piece in particular appears to be stamped on a piece of thin slag: it is cracked and bent, with the design running off the flan at top. It is a wonderful piece that tells the story as soon as you put it in your hand.