Peru: Essayers initials

Hi,,

since I've occupying myself with the overdates on the ½ dinero coins, I've noticed that South American coins have ASSAYERs, whose initials appear on the silver and gold coins. So have the coins minted in Peru. In many of coin pages, those initials are shown as mint marks, which they are not! Have a look here:

N#5413

This should probably have been posted in “Numista Coin Catalogue”, but my real question is, do anyone know the names behind the initials. I've tried to collect the initials, but I'm sure I missed some, but for sure I never found the names.

Thanks in advance for your help

Ole

Hi sjoelund,

As you know, the Peruvian system of assayers initials or signatures  was inherited from the Spanish times. The fact that most of the coins have two initials doesn't mean that those are the initials of  the given name and the family name of one assayer. In Spanish times, the coins were “signed” by two assayers (each one supervising the other!!) who put only the initial of the  given name of each of them on the coin.

This costum (two assayers, given name initial) was continued by the assayers of Casa de Moneda de Lima in Republican times during the 19th century. As late as in the 1880ies the (2) given name initials were replaced by the (2) initials of the family name. 

Here a list of assayers who worked in/for the Casa de Moneda de Lima from 1860 to 1917, i.e. the period of the 0.900 silver Sol.

Regards 

christianvl

Hi,

thanks a lot. I found an article https://traveling-cook.com/mint-assayers-spanish-america/ on the web, but it didn't go into any real detail, hence I asked for help.

I have made the table of those important people from 1863 (decimal coins) to 1917. It looks like this

I honestly think it's nice to have this table and maybe one day also for pre-decimal coins, but where to put in Numista? Any ideas?

Ole

Perhaps in “World coins chat: Peru” ?

Christian