I was down at my fav coin shop today, goin through the world coins, when I came across a sleeve/tray of coins that I had never looked through. I could tell the tray was heavy and that the coins were probably silver in nature so of course I got excited! In going through the coins I found two 8 reales and a 2 reales. I was going to purchase all three of these coins when I got to looking at one the reales that just didn't look right (I'll post pics of the other ones later). I flipped the coin over and found that the reverse of the coin appeared to have the silver peeling off of it. I looked at my friend (who is the dealer) and held up the coin (obverse toward him). I said, "Hey what's this?".... he said that's an 8 Reale...I then flipped the coin over and handed to him and said, "What's up with this coin?" He looked at the coin and looked back at me and said, "You can have it......" I started to laugh. Apparently this coin wasn't suppossed to be out in the trays and I know this for fact because the 2x2 that it was in had none of their usual writing on it (their version of barcodes for record keeping). Also the 2x2 it was in was not the type that they normally use, it appeared much older and well, I can't explain it..... Anyways, I do think this coin is fake (although I have been wrong in the past!) because of the flaking silver and it appears to be iron or even copper underneath. Here are the pics. I just thought it was interesting because it looks like this coin was actually passed around back in the 1800's as currency.... Just something cool, plus I know that there are people out there that actually collect counterfeit coins so I figured they may like this one.
Todd

It certainly looks like a fake Todd, seems odd why it was pierced, probably to wear as jewellery but then again they didn't know it was fake back then!

I had an over-struck one of these that was a George III Bank Dollar but it too was a fake so I got my money-back but some fakes are nice such as the Georgian Halfpennies that circulated over here, quite a few were counterfeits.

- Clive.