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Resplandores: Cap and Rays 8 Reales of the Republic of Mexico, 1823-1897
Dunigan, Mike & Parker, J.B. (1997). Resplandores: Cap and Rays 8 Reales of the Republic of Mexico, 1823-1897. Beverly Hills, CA: Superior Stamp & Coin. Pp. xxv + 436. $125.00.
Book Review By: Alexander W. Siegel, Ph.D.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Cap and Rays 8 Reales of the Republic of Mexico became the dominant worldwide medium of commerce. Referred to by the Chinese as the “Mex Dollar”, this coin was minted in enormous quantities at 14 different mints. The Cap & Rays 8 Reales was without peer in its international acceptance and, while exact mintages for the entire series are unknown, the total was at least that of its nearest rival—the Morgan silver dollar.
A lot of Mexican coin collectors are simply nuts about this beautifully designed crown and its numerous varieties. The Cap & Ray 8 Reales series is collected passionately by a large number of enthusiastic individuals, and is one of the most widely collected series in Mexican numismatics. Until the publication of Resplandores, the information available about this historic and important series was, however, incomplete, fragmentary, and frequently inaccurate.
Resplandores is a capstone to a series of earlier major efforts at cataloging the Cap and Ray 8 Reales published over the previous 150 years: Dr. J.L. Riddell’s Monograph of the Silver Dollar (1845), Dr. Pradeau’s epic four-volume Historia Numismatica de Mexico 1823-1950 (1957), Henry B. Christensen ‘s (1958) Silver Dollars of Independent Mexico, Neil Utberg’s (1966) Coins of the Republic of Mexico [& George Vogt’s 1976 revision of that work], Carlos Elizondo’s (1968) Eight Reales and Pesos of the New World, Drs. T.V. Buttrey & Clyde Hubbard’s (1971) A Guide Book of Mexican Coins, Krause Publications’ (1972) Standard Catalog of World Coins, Larry Hanks’s (1977) Encyclopedia of Mexican Republic Coins, George Vogt and Colin Bruce’s (1978) Standard Catalog of Mexican Coins, Paper Money and Medals, and Al Almanzar’s (1981) check list entitled Cap and Rays and Balance Scale: Mexican 8 Reales and Pesos.
While these works all reflected enormous effort, enormous gaps remained. Except for Pradeau, they consisted mainly of priced checklists, with little historical background provided. Many of the errors of omission and commission in the early works went uncorrected and were repeated in the later works. Presentation was inconsistent: While some of the earlier works organized the series, appropriately, by mint and then by date within mint (e.g., Pradeau, Vogt, and Almanzar), others (e.g., Buttrey & Hubbard, Hanks, and recent editions of Krause) organized the series by date and then by mint within date. So, until the publication of Resplandores the novice collector had little historical context in which to place the series, and more advanced collectors had inconsistent, incomplete, and frequently incorrect information.
A picture (or photograph) is really worth a thousand words. With the notable exception of Riddell’s (1845) monograph (which had extensive rubbings and line drawings), the previous works had few if any pictorial images or photographs. Given the huge variety of the styles of the major devices, i.e., Eagles, Caps, dates, mottos, etc., verbal descriptions of these features simply aren’t sufficient. Unless you can compare images of square-tailed and round-tailed eagles, or European, Mexican, and Sonoran style eagles, identification of those features in the heat of battle on the bourse is incredibly difficult, requiring years of experience and practice. The novice is in trouble before he or she really starts.
A single volume was desperately needed for both novice and advanced collectors in which the authors:
Situated the series historically, including the methods of manufacture and the mints
Corrected the earlier errors of omission and commission
Delineated completely each date-assayer combination known currently along with corresponding photographs that capture the distinctive features of each coin
Provided relative rarity data for each Date-Mintmark-Assayer combination.
The incredibly beautiful and popular series of the Cap and Ray 8 Reales...”Resplandores”.... deserves no less.
Mike Dunigan and J.B. Parker have, in Resplandores, accomplished these goals admirably. The senior author is well known in the field of world numismatics and is, along with Clyde Hubbard (now 86, known as “The Dean of Mexican Numismatics”) perhaps the leading expert in the field of Mexican numismatics. Mike Dunigan has been a full-time Mexican coin dealer for over 30 years, has helped to build many of the definitive collections of Mexican coins, and considers the Cap and Ray 8 Reales to be his specialty. His qualifications to author the present book are without peer. J.B. Parker was a life-long collector of Mexican coins, but the Cap & Ray 8 Reales were his true passion. The majority of the photographs in Resplandores are of the coins in Parker’s collection. His Cap and Ray 8 Reales collection was sold in a major auction by Superior Stamp & Coin in 1998.
Resplandores is an impressive, well-written, well-bound, “coffee table” sized book (8-1/2: x 11”). In the excellent and comprehensive introduction (23 Pp.) the Cap & Ray series is first situated historically, then the methods of manufacture are detailed thoroughly, and finally the structure for the entry for each coin is provided.
The remainder of the book is devoted to the coins themselves, appropriately organized by Mint. A short introduction is given to each mint and its owners, assayers & their initials, and dates of tenure. Within each mint, each date is assigned a unique Dunigan-Parker (DP) number, e.g., a Do 1875 JM is assigned “Do57”, while a Do 1875 CM is assigned “Do58”. For each date (Date-Mintmark-Assayer combination), the authors provide four categories of information:
General Information. The authors discuss general design changes and distinctive features, particularly Die Style and consideration of overall design.
Rarity. The authors establish a 7-point rarity scale: Excessively Rare, Extremely Rare, Very Rare, Rare, Very Scarce, Scarce, and Common. Rarity ratings are then given for each date and its major varieties.
Condition. The authors describe the condition in which each coin normally appears and its availability in high grade. “...Specifically, we want to give the collector a feel for the highest condition in which the coin exists, as well as the highest grade in which the coin is normally obtainable...” (p. xxiii). They also comment on factors that affect the coins’ appearance, including strike characteristics, flan irregularities, luster, etc.
Varieties. The authors’ describe their criteria for specifying major collectable varieties as being “principle-driven”: “...we included major varieties that occur due to the intentional actions of the die maker and/or mint officials, or major errors and their attempted rectification, if any.” (P. xxiii). Among such features are Die Style changes, die axis changes in the same year, over- dates, over-assayers, over-mintmarks, etc. Varieties are listed by the most likely order of issue.
A unique contribution of Resplandores is the extensive provision of photographs, one for the obverse and reverse of each coin (1:1 aspect) and most major varieties are provided. The time and energy required to effect this aspect of the book alone is mind-boggling. In many instances collectors across the country were solicited for the loan of their specimen of a particular date so that the best possible set of photographs could be included in the book. The black-and-white photographs are all exceptionally clear, and distinctive features are provided in magnified views. These photographs are an unprecedented and unsurpassed tool for the serious collector, and, alone, are worth several times the price of the book!
While the book is not error-free, the few errors are, for the most part, typographical. But in this regard, Resplandores is miles ahead of any previously published work on the series. Will everyone agree with the selection of “Major varieties”, long a contentious point in the collecting of the series? Not a chance! (Serious collectors and students of the series may disagree with the exclusion or inclusion of many varieties...but the authors articulate, and are consistent in, their selection criteria).
Some issues and concerns are raised when a knowledgeable collector reads the book.
1. The Rarity Scale is purely qualitative. No quantitative “anchors” are attached to the seven points of the Rarity Scale. It would have been helpful to this reviewer (and collector) if rough quantitative estimates had been attached to the qualitative descriptors “Excessively Rare, Extremely Rare, etc.” I’d even be content if, to prolong the accuracy of the book, the ranges of the anchor points overlapped, e.g., Extremely Rare = 3-8 specimens known, Very Rare = 7-15. While I can appreciate the authors’ expressed desire for the book not to become outmoded, even with “estimated numbers known” given, there is little likelihood of the book as a whole becoming outmoded. [Sheldon’s classic Penny Whimsy (1949) published over 50 years ago, is still a classic reference in the field of Large Cents.] As more students study the series and more collectors get involved, any number of new and different varieties likely will be discovered, and “hoards” or “mini-hoards” of specific dates will be un-earthed or come into the market. These will lead to minor changes in a coin’s rarity rating, but those local and minor changes would not invalidate the overall use of a quantitatively-anchored rating scale.
2. No Pricing is given. Contrary to most other series “guides”, and the earlier works in the Cap & Ray series, the authors provide no pricing information. Their reason for not including prices is that prices go out of date rather quickly, and a major revision of the book would be needed to keep up with these changes (and I personally think it unlikely that the authors ever plan a revised edition). However, the lack of pricing does not bother me in the slightest! First, the time necessary to price accurately all of the coins would have been so great that by the time prices had been published, they would already have been out of date. Second, for any given date...even in Uncirculated condition...the price (or “value”) for that date depends on a host of factors including strike, luster, toning, relative lack of bag marks, the coin’s true rarity, the date’s popularity, etc. Because of the heightened attention to “Condition” in today’s U.S. coin marketplace--in which an MS-60 might be valued at $50, an MS-63 at $100, an MS-65 at $500, an MS-66 $2000, and an MS-67 at $20,000--any such value estimates are misleading when it comes to pricing Cap & Ray 8 Reales. The grading/pricing of these coins is much less precise and much more intuitive. Clyde Hubbard said it best when he claimed that the most valid way to “grade” a Mexican coin was to ask and answer two questions: (1) is it New or is it not? And (2) Is it Nice or is it not? Including “pricing” in a book like Resplandores, which will undoubtedly stand the test of time, is [like putting tits on a Boar Hog?!] neither necessary, nor prudent.
3. The DP numbering system adds nothing. The numbering system established by the authors is not helpful, nor does it provide for systematic expansion when and if new dates or new Assayers are discovered. While “As-01” and “Do-01” both refer to the first date produced at each mint, the As-01 was coined in 1864 (and has a “Facing Eagle”), while the Do-01 was coined in 1824 (and has a “hook neck” design). It is confusing, particularly to a novice collector when the numbering system is not consistent across mints. It would seem that a future-looking numbering system for the Cap and Ray 8 Reales series would include the year of issue as a fundamental component.
But the criticisms I have raised are really minor in the context of the whole. The copious and complete (to 1997) information and the magnificent photographs in Resplandores represent a unique contribution both to the collecting of Cap & Ray 8 Reales and to the general field of Mexican numismatics. Many dealers who specialize in Mexican coins have much of this information (e.g., of unrecognized rarities), either in their records or their heads. They have chosen NOT to share their information either because of the enormous commitment of time necessary, or from anticipated castigation from other similarly closed-mouth dealers, or from fear that they’ll not be able to maximize their profit, as they can, if collectors did not have this information.
Fortunately for Mexican numismatics, Dunigan and Parker have chosen to “break the conspiracy of silence” to share their knowledge with us. They should be praised for their monumental effort. They have written and published what can best be termed the current “industry standard”. Now in 2005, while a number of new varieties and mini-hoards of a few dates have been discovered, in the full seven years since its publication, the place of Resplandores as the #1 work in the Cap & Ray 8 Reales remains unchallenged.
Resplandores is essential reading and belongs on the bookcase of all Mexican numismatists. Even the casual collector of the series could profit significantly from reading and studying it. I might add that the book sits on the coffee table in my living room, and a copy goes in my briefcase when I attend coin shows.
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