Page 166 - Treasure, World & U.S. Coin Auction 17

Table of Potosí 8 Reales of Philip II

Sedwick = The Practical Book of Cobs (4th edition, 2007)
Paoletti = 8 Reales Cobs of Potosí (2006)

This table was compiled from decades of data that we hope to present in a future publication. Various notes to assist the user:
1. “Tressure dimples” refers to the points of the tressure in the quadrants of the cross; on the earliest issues, these dimples extend
deep into the design, same as for Seville cobs of the same period.
2. “Borders” refers to the circle of dots separating the inner details from the legends on the outside; on the earliest issues, these
dots are smaller and spaced very tightly, whereas later issues have larger dots more loosely spaced.
3. “Crown loop” refers to the bowl-like bottom “protector” below the crown on early issues; this feature disappears under assayer
L going forward.
4. “Separators” refers to the symbols that separate each word in the legends; on early issues these are commas and on later issues
they are dots.
5. Lions in cross start with a style identical to Seville cobs of the same period but then change to rampant (“dancing”) and passant
(“flat”); assayer B adopted a larger Seville style. Beginning with 3rd-period B, the lions and castles in the cross go through many
different, increasingly cruder styles, which are best cataloged by Paoletti. The castle becomes two-storied under assayer A.
6. We place Paoletti’s Group B8 under 3rd-period B because of comma separators and one-storied castles.
7. We place Sedwick P6 (2nd-period B) before assayer C (P5) now due to evidence that the erasure above the C is actually B/L,
with style matching 2nd-period B and 2nd-period L. Formerly the erasure was believed to be S/X, but now we are discarding
assayers X (P7) and S (P8) for lack of evidence of their existence. Second-period L (P9) was relocated to an earlier position before
the 4th edition of our book.

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