Watch List notes:

Cartagena, Colombia, cob 8 reales, 1621, assayer A to right, mintmark RN to left, ex-"Dry Tortugas wreck" (ca. 1622), extremely rare, PCGS VF details / environmental damage, Oceans Odyssey Plate Coin, Boletin Numismatico Cover Coin. Restrepo-M41.1; S-C2; KM-3.2; Cal-1229. 12.68 grams. Very broad flan with choice full cross-lions-castles and all-important 21 of date at 11-12 o'clock, the nearly full shield equally well detailed with clear assayer A to right, just inside PHIL- of king's name, most of crown at top, mintmark not visible but known to be RN to left (no denomination), attractively toned over moderately corroded surfaces all over, widely acknowledged as the nicest of just four clearly dated specimens known of this first issue of Cartagena, all lost on the 1622 Fleet and curiously recovered from separate wrecksites, namely the Atocha and the "Dry Tortugas wreck," which some believe was the Portuguese-built Buen Jesus y Nuestra Senora del Rosario (read the accompanying book to learn more about the salvage and research behind this wreck). Three of the known specimens are nicknamed after the owners who held them when the 1621 date was confirmed, this one being the "Zucker specimen" after collector Samuel Zucker of Florida, who wrote an article about two of the coins (in addition to one from the same dies but without visible date owned by Herman Blanton) in a pair of 2005 articles in Coin World and PLVS VLTRA newsletter. A third clearly dated specimen, known as the Pearson specimen, was discovered shortly thereafter and offered in Sedwick Auction 3 in 2008 (lot 121), and then a fourth (unnamed) was sold in Sedwick Auction 8 in 2010 (lot 516). Those coins and the other clearly dated specimen in Zucker's article--known as the Sinclair specimen--all came from the Atocha, as did Blanton's undated piece. In his articles Zucker emphasized that he diligently searched for other specimens and found no others with visible dates despite several obverse matches, crucially lacking a pomegranate in the shield as opposed to similar 1622 issues WITH pomegranate that Jorge Proctor has proven were made in Bogota (Boletin Numismatico #105, 2nd semester 2018). In any case the present piece is the only one to be officially certified and encapsulated by PCGS, a befitting honor for what is effectively Colombia's very first "dollar," its sale well timed for the 3rd International Convention of Historians and Numismatists in Cartagena this December. From the "Dry Tortugas wreck" (ca. 1622), with original Seahawk certificate 91-1A-2081.0099 and Sedwick certificate from 2004, Plate Coin on page 187 of Oceans Odyssey 3 (2013), by Odyssey Marine Exploration, also featured in a DailyMail.com article of April 4, 2013 by Hugo Gye, and featured on the cover of Boletin Numismatico issue 110 (2nd semester 2021), a copy of which accompanies this lot.
($10000-20000)