Here is tiny book that all of you Mexican silver and copper collectors should have in your reference library. It’s not really an auction catalog. It’s not really a coin catalog in the truest form. It has no photographs, good or bad. But it is “chock full” of information about the great Gustavo Escobar Collection that was sold in six sales from October 15th 1967 to February 1968 by Sergio Torres Martinez and his wife Ana Maria Cross de Torres.
This book lists a total of 3,274 items from the Escobar Collection offered in these sales that were minted in silver, cooper, brass, nickel, and lead. The authors clearly state which 50 items were withdrawn from the sale and which 345 were not sold, which isn’t always the case in today’s sales. Within its 104 pages you will find many outstanding coins beginning with Carlos & Juana Maravedis all the way through the Revolutionary War, and a number of modern coins until the early 1960s.
Mr. & Mrs. Torres have done an excellent job of organizing the pertinent data they present after the sales. Believe it or not, there is a great index allowing readers to easily find the coin series in which they are interested broken down by Period, Spanish ruler during the colonial period, then by mint in the Republican Period. The extensive Revolutionary coins in the Escobar Collection are cataloged by the Wood-Garza numbers with great descriptions.
When I first discovered this work in the early 1980s, several dealers and collectors told me it was of little value to me because it had no gold and not a many really rare 8 Reales. But over the years I have found it very interesting for its content allowing me to better understand what coins were available and in what grades to collectors in Mexico before 1967.
While not one of the great catalogs, with great photographs or good descriptions, this little book should be in every collector’s research library if you any interest in Mexican silver or copper minor coins and it can also be helpful for 8 Reales collectors too.
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