1712 Felipe V 8 Reales Cob (Macuquina): Value Guide

If you inherited a crude, irregular silver coin dated 1712 with a cross on one side and a Spanish shield on the other, you likely have a Felipe V 8 reales cob struck in Mexico City. The good news: it is real silver, 90% fine, so it always has a floor value. The realistic range runs from roughly 100 USD for a worn, off-center piece to several thousand USD for a full, well-struck example with a clear date and assayer.

What you actually have

This is a cob (in Spanish, macuquina), a hand-struck colonial coin made before mechanical presses arrived. Instead of the neat round coins you know, cobs were cut from a silver bar, hammered by hand, and left deliberately irregular in shape. The metal content, not the shape, was what mattered at the time.

Specifics for the 1712 Felipe V 8 reales:

• Denomination: 8 reales (the famous "piece of eight," the Spanish silver dollar)
• Ruler: Felipe V, first Bourbon king of Spain, on the throne from 1700
• Mint: Mexico City (Casa de Moneda de México)
• Silver fineness: 0.900 (90% pure silver)
• Weight: 26.91 grams
• Diameter: 37 mm
• Type: "Primera época" (first-period) cob, made before the screw press was introduced in 1732

How much is a 1712 Felipe V 8 reales worth in 2026?

Value on these cobs swings hard on two things: how much of the design survives (especially the date and the assayer's mark) and the shape of the flan. A round, well-centered piece with a legible date is far rarer than a chopped, worn one, because the striking process itself produced mostly imperfect coins.

Condition	What you see	Approximate value (USD)
Heavily worn / no date	Silver present, design mostly gone	60 to 150
Average cob	Partial design, date weak or partial	200 to 600
Clear date and assayer	Full legend readable, decent centering	800 to 2,500
Full flan, sharp strike	Round, well-centered, high detail	3,000 and up

The silver alone is worth roughly 20 to 25 USD at current bullion prices (about 0.78 troy ounces of pure silver). That is your absolute floor. No genuine 1712 cob should sell below its melt value, so treat any "bargain" far under that as a warning sign.

What drives the price

A legible date and assayer mark. Collectors pay a premium for cobs where you can actually read "1712" and identify the assayer initial. Many cobs are undated or the date is off the edge of the flan, which cuts value sharply.

Centering and completeness. Because the flan was irregular, a nearly round, well-centered example is genuinely scarce and commands a large premium over a typical chopped cob.

Certification. A cob graded and slabbed by NGC or PCGS sells for more and, just as important, is easier to sell because the buyer trusts it is authentic. Counterfeits of colonial cobs are common, so third-party grading matters here more than for most modern coins.

How to tell if yours is genuine

Colonial cobs are heavily faked, so run these checks before you get excited:

1. Weigh it. A genuine 8 reales cob should weigh close to 26.91 grams. Use a jewelry scale. A coin far lighter or heavier is suspect (though worn examples can be slightly under).
2. Check the diameter and silver look. Around 37 mm, with the warm gray tone of aged silver, not the bright white of a cast fake.
3. Look at the edges. Real cobs were cut from a bar and show hammered, irregular edges, not a smooth cast seam.
4. Study the engraving style. The cross, shield, and legend should look hand-punched and slightly uneven. Cast copies show mushy, soft detail and sometimes tiny bubbles in the surface.
5. When in doubt, get it certified. For a coin potentially worth thousands, NGC or PCGS certification pays for itself.

Where to sell it

For a piece this old and this fakeable, sell where buyers know cobs:

• A verified numismatic dealer who can weigh and evaluate the coin in person and pay you on the spot.
• The Pesoteca buy-and-sell forum, where collectors who actually want colonial silver will bid on it.
• A major auction house (Heritage, Stack's Bowers) if you have a high-grade, certified example that could bring several thousand dollars.

Before you sell, photograph the obverse, reverse, and edge in good light, and compare your coin against the value range above. Avoid dumping it to the first Facebook offer, and never sell below the silver melt value.

If you want to date and value colonial silver generally, our guides on the Spanish colonial 8 reales and on how coin grading affects price are worth reading next.

Have a 1712 (or nearby year) Felipe V cob and can't read the date or assayer? Post clear photos of both sides and the edge in the Pesoteca forum and let the community help you pin down exactly what you have.

This piece belongs to the reign of Felipe V of Spain (1700-1746). First king of the House of Bourbon in Spain, grandson of Louis XIV of France. His first period of reign (1700-1724) lasted until his abdication in favor of Luis I.

The government of New Spain in 1712 was in the hands of Fernando de Alencastre, Duke of Linares, who was strengthening coastal defenses against English privateering.

The numismatic type of the piece is a cob (macuquina), also called a hammer-cut coin. The planchets were clipped with shears from a silver bar and struck between hand-held dies, so no cob has an edge or perfectly circular shape. It circulated as a reference trade coin throughout the Atlantic for more than two centuries.

The Mexico City Mint had been striking cobs almost uninterruptedly since the 16th century. The final years before the pillar reform of 1732 saw an increase in the volume of registered silver, driven by European demand and by the mines of Zacatecas and Guanajuato. The dies were signed by the Mexico City Mint assayer active in the period, the official charged by the Royal Treasury with certifying that the silver's fineness met the viceregal standard.

The colonial catalogs trace this piece within the families of the Mexico City Real de a ocho, with prices that respond to rarity by year and assayer's signature.

A year in which the War of the Spanish Succession was advancing toward its close with negotiations that would lead to the Treaty of Utrecht.