Watch List notes:

Lima, Peru, gold 8 escudos, 1841MB, extremely rare, NGC XF 45, Calico La Onza Plate Coin. KM-unl (148.6 for type). With more natural luster than this grade should have, albeit with arguably too many small marks and high-point wear to make AU, this coin is considered the second-finest known of just three confirmed examples, the top coin permanently impounded in the Banco del Peru museum and the third-place coin in private hands graded AU details with light tooling (NGC). This date is apparently missing in all the classic collections like Fonrobert, Peltzer, Salbach and Ulex, as well as more recent collections like Caballero, Eliasberg Lissner, Pittman and Sellschopp. The AU-details example recently surfaced in a Cayon auction in December 2008 (lot #3875), while the present coin hit the modern market in May 1990 as one of a two-coin lot (#527)--the other coin being 1840--in the Sotheby's (Geneva) auction of gold coins found in a Venezuelan bank hoard. That two-coin lot, clearly overlooked at the time, shows a big difference between the dates 1840 and 1841, as the latter represents a rearrangement of the date-side legend to display the fineness of "21 Qs" in response to a September 30, 1840 decree to require coins to show fineness, due to problems with low-fineness "moneda feble" at the time. While a relatively substantial mintage of 8 escudos took place in Cuzco from 1840 to 1845, the only years of 8E mintage in post-federation Lima were 1841 and 1850 (the latter also quite rare). As the only numerically-graded coin of the three known, the present lot is therefore the finest and only example in the NGC census. Plate Coin #2097 in Calico's La Onza (2004). NGC #4234344-001.

Estimate: $10000-20000