1732 Mexico Pillar Dollar (8 Reales)

From cob to circle

Before 1732, Mexico's silver coins were cobs. A royal decree of 1728 ordered a change to round, machine-struck coins. At the Mexico City Mint the new coinage began on March 29, 1732, when the first 'pillar' coin was struck. The same year Mexico's gold coinage changed from cobs to a portrait type.

The 1728 standard fixed the coin at 8.5 to the mark of silver, 11/12 or .9167 fine, giving about 24.8 grams of pure silver. A 1772 reform lowered the fineness. The 8-reales coin measured about 38 millimeters across.

1732 is the first date of the series, and it was struck at Mexico City under the assayer whose initial, F, appears on the coin. Striking of the pillar 8 reales was later extended to several other Spanish colonies.

A Bourbon king's coin

Philip V was the first Spanish king of the Bourbon line, a dynasty that still reigns. He ruled twice: from 1700 until 1724, when he abdicated in favor of his eldest son Louis I, and again after Louis died that same year, until his own death in 1746. The pillar coinage belongs to his second reign.

The design is a piece of imperial symbolism. Two globes, the Old and New Worlds, sit under a crown above the waves of the ocean that separates them, flanked by the crowned Pillars of Hercules bearing the motto PLVS VLTRA. Around them runs VTRAQUE VNUM, 'both are one.' The other side carries the crowned arms of Castile and León with the Bourbon shield at the center, the legend PHILIP V D G HISPAN ET IND REX, and the denomination 8 and assayer's initial F between rosettes.

The coin that became a dollar

Spanish dollars were struck mainly at Potosí, Lima and Mexico City, with smaller mints at Bogotá, Popayán, Guatemala City and Santiago, and they circulated across the world. In British North America, where coin was always scarce, the Spanish dollar was the everyday hard money. When Alexander Hamilton set the weight of the new U.S. dollar in 1792 he based it on a Treasury assay of Spanish dollars, and the Spanish dollar stayed legal tender in the United States until the Coinage Act of 1857.

Most theories of the dollar sign trace it to the ribbon-wrapped Pillars of Hercules on this coin, and the sign originally had two vertical strokes. In Asia the coin's standard lived on: the first Chinese yuan coins matched the Spanish dollar's specification, and the Japanese yen, Korean won and Philippine peso all descend from it.

The year the first pillar dollars were struck, George Washington was born in Virginia, James Oglethorpe received a royal charter for the colony of Georgia, and Benjamin Franklin published the first Poor Richard's Almanack.

Shipwrecks and record prices

A year after the first pillar dollars were struck, many of them went to the bottom. On July 13, 1733, the Spanish treasure fleet under Don Rodrigo de Torres sailed from Havana for Spain; the next day a hurricane scattered and sank it along some 80 miles of the Florida Keys. Since the early 1960s divers have located most of the wrecks, and since the 1960s-70s first-year pillar dollars have turned up on several shipwrecks. That has made low-grade 1732 coins available; one corroded wreck example from the 1733 fleet weighed only 20.8 grams.

Collectors still prize coins that circulated on land. One 1732 coin offered in 2012 came with a family history: it had belonged to a Spanish navy seaman who acquired it in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898, and its owner's grandson supplied a letter and photograph with it.

Well-preserved examples are another matter. An uncertified coin described as Choice About Uncirculated sold in Long Beach in May 2008 for $86,250. A PCGS AU58 coin offered in April 2013 did not sell. On August 11, 2016, a 1732 Mo-F graded Mint State 63 by NGC, from the Isaac Rudman Collection of Mexican coins and then the second-finest certified by NGC, sold at auction in Anaheim for $152,750, a world record for the type and more than double what comparable coins had brought in the previous decade.

Accounts of the earlier mark differ. Press reports said the previous record was $75,000 for an AU58 coin from the Millennia collection in 2008, while the 2016 catalog said the Millennia coin hammered for $40,000 and another example hammered for $75,000.

How to know a 1732 pillar dollar

Look for the date 1732 with the Mexico City mintmark and the assayer's initial F; the coin is catalogued as KM-103. A full-weight example weighs about 27.07 grams, with about 0.798 ounce of pure silver. Some first-year coins are struck on small flans that swallow part of the rims, and slight bulging of the planchet is common for the issue.

Shipwreck coins are usually corroded and light; coins that circulated on land show wear and toning instead, and many collectors prefer them because they are much harder to find. Mint State coins are very rare.

The numbers

Mintage

Not published in the sources consulted

Weight

About 27.07 grams (27.0674 g recorded for the 2016 record coin)

Diameter

About 38 mm

Composition

.9167 silver (11/12 fine), about 0.798 oz pure silver

Mint and assayer

Mexico City (Mo), assayer F

Authority

Royal decree of 1728; first struck March 29, 1732

Reference

KM-103

Timeline

1. 1700

   Philip V becomes the first Bourbon king of Spain.

2. 1724

   Philip abdicates for his son Louis I, then returns to the throne after Louis dies.

3. 1728

   A royal decree authorizes round, milled coinage for the Indies at .9167 fine.

4. Mar 29, 1732

   The Mexico City Mint strikes its first pillar coin.

5. Jul 13, 1733

   The New Spain treasure fleet leaves Havana; a hurricane wrecks it in the Florida Keys the next day.

6. 1746

   Philip V dies.

7. 1772

   Spain lowers the fineness of its dollar.

8. 1792

   Hamilton bases the U.S. dollar's weight on an assay of Spanish dollars.

9. 1857

   The Coinage Act ends the Spanish dollar's legal-tender status in the United States.

10. 1898

    A Spanish navy seaman acquires a 1732 pillar dollar in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

11. May 2008

    An uncertified Choice AU 1732 sells in Long Beach for $86,250.

12. Aug 11, 2016

    The Rudman NGC MS63 example sells for $152,750, a record for the type.

The world in 1732

• Feb 22, 1732

  George Washington is born.

• Mar 31, 1732

  Composer Joseph Haydn is born.

• Apr 16, 1732

  Nader Khan overthrows Shah Tahmasp II of Persia.

• Jun 1732

  James Oglethorpe receives a royal charter for Georgia.

• Nov 29, 1732

  An earthquake in southern Italy kills 1,940 people in the Kingdom of Naples.

• Dec 7, 1732

  The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, opens in London.

• Dec 28, 1732

  Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack first appears.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1732 Mexico Pillar Dollar (8 Reales) is number 64 of 100 in the coins entries of the FLOAT 100. 96 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (70 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Spanish dollar was legal tender in the United States until 1857.
• Most theories trace the dollar sign to the ribbon-wrapped pillars on Spanish dollars.
• The first Chinese yuan coins were made to the Spanish dollar's specification.
• Some 1732 pillar dollars sank with the 1733 treasure fleet in the Florida Keys only a year after they were struck.
• Philip V, the king named on the coin, ruled Spain twice, abdicating in 1724 and returning the same year.
• One 1732 pillar dollar came with a letter tracing it to a Spanish seaman in Cuba in 1898.