Owner Comments:
Uber Gem delightful coin. This is a pristine sample of the 1898 restrike Cap and Ray peso. The fields are pristine, tons of luster. Despite not being uncommon coin (at the time of purchase, April 2017, NGC had certified 235 specimens) it is at this select quality as there are only 19@66 and 2@67.
The story behind this coin is very interesting. Both the Mexico City and the San Francisco (USA) mints were producing these coins in 1949 to pay the Nationalists army of Chiang Kai-Shek, who was fighting the communists. This type of coin was very familiar to the Chinese as it had circulated for decades over Asia. Therefore soldiers were familiar with the issue and accepted it as payment.
The Mexico City mint was to strike 10,250,000 pesos but due to the urgency of the need, the San Francisco mint was subcontracted to strike 2,000,000 pesos leaving Mexico to strike the remaining 8,250,000. All of the dies for striking the pesos were prepared in Mexico City and small changes were made to differentiate the restrikes from the 1898 originals.
The easiest way to tell a restrike from an original is to examine the coin's mintmark "Mo". On the original peso the tops of the mintmark 'M' and 'o' lined up horizontally while on the restrike the top of the 'o' is significantly higher than the top of the 'M'. In my experience, this is easier than counting the denticles as you can see in one minute.
Supposedly one could tell the restrikes from the originals by the number of denticles, the beads around the rim of the design, but as the denticle counts on original pesos differ from coin to coin this method does not always work (besides, good luck counting!). Original pesos have been observed with obverse denticle counts of 134, 139, and 140, and reverse denticle counts of 137, 138, or 139. The restrikes are more consistent with 134 denticles on the obverse and 131 on the reverse.
Dr. Alberto Pradeau ("Dean" of Mexican Numismatics from the first half of the XX century) found that of the 8,250,000 pesos produced by the Mexico City mint between August to November 1949, 2,526,978 were delivered to the Republic of China via Hong Kong and Canton, 1,942,000 were stored in the vaults of the Mexico City mint, 3,779,000 were sent to Hermosillo, Sonora during the month of June 1950 for melting, and 2,022 were kept by the Bank of Mexico. Dr. Pradeau is reported to be an eye witness of the minting of these coins at the San Francisco Mint.
Of interest the Mexican Monetary Law of 1905 permitted restriking of the 1897 and previous eight reales coins for export only, but not the 1898 and later peso coins. It appears that some of these restrike pesos were sold to the public as bullion coins as this was a normal practice in Mexico which had struck it's own bullion "onza" coins in 1949.
The San Francisco mint 2,000,000 pesos had a different fate. They were struck at the mint from June to August of 1949 and were taken from the mint to the vaults of the nearby Bank of America to await shipment to China. But the coins were sold back to the San Francisco Mint, melted, and recycled into American coins. It appears that no San Francisco restrike pesos were saved as few people learned of the striking before they were melted.
For more information and some images you can visit http://www.brianrxm.com/comdir/cnsmain_mexicopesochina.htm