Glossary of Shipwreck and Spanish Colonial Coin Terms

Every term a buyer meets — cob, macuquina, real, escudo, assayer, Fisher grade, NGC Shipwreck Effect, flan, details grade — defined plainly.

This is the working vocabulary of shipwreck and Spanish colonial numismatics — the denominations, the mint offices, the salvage terms and the grading language — defined the way the trade actually uses them. Where a term carries a standard (a weight, a fineness, a grade band), the standard is stated with it.

How to use this glossary

The terms below are grouped in the order you meet them: what the coin is, who made it, how it was lost and found, and how the market describes it today. Weights and finenesses are nominal standards; sea-recovered coins legitimately run under standard where surfaces were etched.

What is the silver floor under these coins?

• 8 reales (hammered) — 27.47 g — .9305 — ≈0.82 troy oz
• 8 reales (milled) — 27.06 g — .9166 — ≈0.80 troy oz
• 4 reales — 13.7 g — .9305 — ≈0.41 troy oz
• 2 reales — 6.9 g — .9305 — ≈0.21 troy oz
• 1 real — 3.4 g — .9305 — ≈0.10 troy oz

Glossary

• Real — The base silver denomination of the Spanish empire. Coins were struck in ½, 1, 2, 4 and 8 reales.
• 8 reales — The eight-real silver coin — the “piece of eight,” about 27.47 g at .9305 fine in the hammered era and the world's first global trade currency.
• Piece of eight — English name for the 8 reales, from its value of eight silver reales.
• Escudo — The gold denomination, struck in 1, 2, 4 and 8 escudos. The 8 escudos is the doubloon of popular usage.
• Doubloon — Common English term for the 8 escudos gold coin.
• Cob — English shorthand for macuquina — irregular, hand-struck colonial coinage cut from silver bars, from the Spanish cabo de barra, “end of the bar.”
• Macuquina — The Spanish term for hand-struck cob coinage, produced in the Americas from the 1570s until milled coinage displaced it.
• Flan — The blank metal disc a coin is struck on. Cob flans were hand-cut and clipped to weight, which is why cobs are irregular.
• Milled coinage — Machine-struck coinage with round flans and edge devices, which replaced cobs in the colonial mints during the 18th century.
• Columnario / pillar dollar — The milled 8 reales of 1732–1772 showing two crowned pillars over waves — the first machine-struck dollar of the Americas.
• Portrait dollar — The later milled 8 reales bearing the monarch's bust, from 1772 onward.
• Royal (galano) — A presentation-quality cob struck on a round, carefully prepared flan with full design — the rarest and most valuable cob format.
• Klippe — A coin struck on a square or otherwise angular clipped flan, notably among 1733-fleet material.
• Corazón — A heart-shaped cob flan, a collected shape variety of colonial silver.
• Assayer — The mint official responsible for certifying the fineness of the silver; his initial appears beside the mintmark and, because assayer terms are documented year ranges, brackets an undated cob to a few years.
• Mintmark — The letter or monogram identifying the mint — P or the PS monogram for Potosí, oM or M for Mexico City, L for Lima, NR for Bogotá, C for Cartagena.
• Tressure — The decorative border of lobes enclosing the cross on the reverse of many cobs.
• Fineness — The proportion of precious metal in the alloy. Hammered colonial silver ran .9305; later milled issues .9166 and lower.
• Countermark — An official punch added to a coin after striking, usually to revalidate it for circulation in another jurisdiction.
• Chopmark — A merchant's punch applied in Asian trade to attest a coin's silver — common on 8 reales that circulated through Canton and Manila.
• 1652 transitional — Potosí issues struck during the reform following the great debasement scandal, when designs and marks changed mid-year. A collected and premium-bearing type.
• Star of Lima — A Lima cob type bearing a star device, one of the market's recognised premium cob types.
• Flota — The annual New Spain convoy, sailing in spring for Veracruz and loading Mexico City silver plus Manila-galleon goods.
• Galeones de Tierra Firme — The annual South American convoy, sailing in late summer for Cartagena and Portobelo and loading Potosí silver and Colombian gold and emeralds.
• Capitana — The lead flagship of a Spanish convoy, and by regulation a principal carrier of registered royal treasure.
• Almiranta — The rear-guard flagship of a convoy — the second treasure vault. The Atocha (1622), Concepción (1641) and Maravillas (1656) were all almirantas.
• Casa de Contratación — The Seville (later Cádiz) office that licensed every ship and registered every consignment of treasure from 1503 to 1790 — the reason wreck manifests survive.
• Quinto real — The royal fifth: the Crown's 20% tax on precious metals, one reason cargo was routinely under-registered.
• Avería — The convoy-defence surcharge levied on registered cargo to pay for escort galleons.
• Salvor — The licensed operator that recovers material from a wreck site and, in most cases, issues the certificates that accompany coins into the market.
• COA — Certificate of authenticity. Meaningful when issued by the salvor holding rights to the site and when it identifies a specific coin; near-worthless when generic.
• Fisher grade — The 1–4 condition scale used on Atocha and Santa Margarita material by Mel Fisher's organisation, with Grade 1 the best-preserved.
• Shipwreck Effect — NGC's designation for surfaces altered by long immersion — etching, crystallisation and softened high points — used in place of a numeric grade.
• Details grade — A holder that authenticates a coin while naming a condition problem: cleaned, tooled, environmental damage, holed or repaired.
• Slab — The sealed, tamper-evident holder in which NGC or PCGS encapsulates a certified coin, with its label and certificate number.
• Pedigree — A named provenance chain — a wreck, a collection or an auction of record — recorded on a label or in the paperwork.
• Sheldon scale — The 1–70 numeric grading scale for circulated and uncirculated coins, rarely applied to sea-salvaged material.
• Buyer's premium — The percentage an auction house adds to the hammer price; the figure that turns a hammer result into what a buyer actually paid.
• Melt — The intrinsic metal value of a coin: fine weight multiplied by spot price. The floor beneath any genuine silver coin.
• Tasa — An official valuation or assessed rate applied to bullion and coin in the colonial system.
• Treasure Coast — The stretch of Florida shore between Sebastian and Fort Pierce where the 1715 Plate Fleet wrecked — still the market's most productive legal source of wreck coins.

Frequently asked questions

• What is the difference between a cob and a milled coin? A cob was hand-struck on an irregular, hand-cut flan; a milled coin was machine-struck on a round flan with an edge device. Cobs dominate the 16th–17th century wreck market; milled 8 reales dominate later wrecks such as El Cazador.
• What is a Fisher grade? A 1–4 condition scale applied to Atocha and Santa Margarita coins by Mel Fisher's organisation, where Grade 1 is the best-preserved material.
• What does “Shipwreck Effect” mean on a slab? It is NGC's description of surfaces altered by long immersion. It confirms marine exposure and authenticity, not a specific wreck and not a numeric grade.

Sources

• Dark Tide Relics, Report No. 14 — The Chart Room (terminology and standards)
• Dark Tide Relics, Report No. 13 — The Attribution Codex (seven-step attribution method)
• Timothy R. Walton, The Spanish Treasure Fleets (Pineapple Press, 1994; paperback 2002) — the standard one-volume history of the convoy system
• NGC — Shipwreck coin certification and “Genuine / Shipwreck Effect” designations — https://www.ngccoin.com
• PCGS — Grading standards and “Genuine / Details” grade definitions — https://www.pcgs.com