11/1/15 Report - Inexpensive Heart-Shaped Cob From Potosi. A Casual Sunday Morning Walk.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

1701 1-Reale From Recent Sedwick Coins Online Auction Catalog.

Yesterday I showed a heart-shaped cob that sold for $100,000 in the recent Sedwick Coins auction.  It is a truly exceptional example.   There were other heart-shaped cobs that went for lower prices.  The least expensive of the heart-shaped coins in that auction was lot number 784.

Here is the item description.

Potosi, Bolivia, cob 1 real Heart, 1701Y, Charles II (posthumous), very rare. S-P43; KM-unl.; CT-unl. 3.77 grams. Unaligned axes and a departure from the "usual" shape but full weight and clearly less crude than the regular issues, with full king's name in legend, full but partially flat cross and pillars, AVF with toned fields, holed in top stem and at one right end of cross. Pedigreed to the Santa Rosa de Lima collection.

This one sold for $2600, a big difference from the one that sold for $100,000.
This one wasn't made with nearly as much care.  I think you can see that if you look at the pictures.

The designs on this cob are not aligned.  One side is slanted several degrees.  The shape just isn't as nice.  And this one has two holes, one of which is in one lobe of the heart.

I find the holes interesting.  Some of the heart-shaped cobs have no holes, some one, and some, like this one, have two holes.  And the placement of the holes varies.

One of the two-holed hearts has a very neat hole, one carefully placed at the top and one, just as carefully placed at the bottom.  Both holes were very neatly made.

It seems to me that if you could figure out why the holes are placed the way they are, you might be closer to figuring out how these cobs were used and why they were made.

For now it is just another fascinating little puzzle.

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I took a little walk to look for bottle or other surface finds today.  I haven't done that for quite a while.

Handy Tool.

This tool is very useful.  It can be used to scratch through sand or muck.  It saves a lot of back bending work and can be used to turn over or pick up things like bottles or shells.

Bottle Found This Morning.

I didn't find anything good on my walk this morning, but did find this one cork-top bottle.  It isn't marked at all.  I did pick up some shells and drift wood pieces and some copper wire, which I'll probably use for something rather than scrapping it.

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On the Treasure Coast we'll have at least a few days of two or three foot surf.  That won't be any help. I'll be happy if we can simply avoid a lot of refilling until we have some more erosion.  The weather is nice, but I'd rather have wind and rain.

There is only one more day left to respond to the blog poll.  I hope you'll do that if you haven't already.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net