SHIPWRECK TREASURES… SOLD
nown as the ‘First Dollar of the Americas’, this 8 Reales coin is the finest of only three known specimens and was recovered from the shipwreck (sunk c.1550) in 1990. It was sold at Heritage Auctions in the USA in 2018 for $528,000. The lot description explained: ‘this earliest of crown-sized coins struck in the New World… just two years after the establishment of the mint (later Mexico City) by royal charter in 1536.’
