Kleebergs - Contemporary Circulating Counterfeit 2 Reales

Realeswatcher it seems Winston Zack, Jeff Rock and myself are experiencing a die transfer process of the period with these base metal issues. In my collection in which over the last two decades I did not cherry-pick these pieces with crudeness in mind but planchet color. These were then XRF with off-metals alloys. A few were 90% silver but most were off-metal after laboratory XRF verification. I even confirmed all these pieces (~10 pieces of the 112 Kleebergs) with a Sigma Analyzer which confirm their non-90% Ag alloy composition since a friend happen to own this $1,000 device. They are also not cast with a shorter lower pitch resonance ring than 90% silver as if performing ring test on brass or copper issues. There trace metals all demonstrate early-mid 19thC provenance with no odd metals in the assay. So we are looking at die transfer as the probable manufacturing method. See what happens ...

Realeswatcher one of the main acceptance criteria of a Kleeberg is its off-metal character. Then you need to decide when was it made having this off-metal character (i.e.,a non-90% Ag alloy and/or even being a debased silver alloy with copper). Debased silver with copper alloys are also excluded in this CCC Family as well as cast pieces. Trace metal impurities would then answer that question with a high end XRF analyzer. As an example an alloy showing trace metals such as Al, Cr, Mg, Mo, etc. would strongly suggest a 20thC makeup. Having done enough 16-19thC copper XRF assays you simply know when you come across a piece which does not belong. Kleebergs were produced and used up to the U.S. Civil War (mid-19thC) time period. It seems metallurgical analysis has OPENED a door to a small group of these pieces which are off-metal YET are not of the 20thC based on all my XRF analyses or being cast fabrications. Some were analyzed in an XRF Vacuum Analyzer which allowed all the metals to have IDLs down to 0.001%. No reported unusual metals were found as described above. We plan on doing some independent XRF testing for verification. Again this is around perhaps a dozen pieces of the now current 185 current reported varieties where we are seeing these so-called non-crude pieces. The rest of the book IMO really has no more head scratchers and is straight forward in its publication. Pieces of this nature can also be checked if they are of a dendritic (cast) microstructure makeup using SEM Microscopy at $350/hour/coin yet perhaps one-two coins is worth exploring in this manner. Cast copper alloys are normally high Cu/Sn and/or Zn (1-10%)/Pb (1-10%) and no XRF analysis has come up with this copper casting empirical formula. What I am saying I will probably perform for the book one or two SEM Microscopy studies to confirm their non-cast makeup. The SEM cast screening method to an experience Material Analysist is virtually a 100% accurate verification to see if any copper based alloy is cast or struck - such as the illustration piece in this thread.

Food for thought:

John - I sent you an email, let me know if you don't get it. Thank you!