Announcing a new series of posts on the Nueva Guatemala mint issues.

As a general rule, every collector knows that all Guatemalan colonial gold coins are rare. Among the series of onzas or coin of 8 Escudos, only the Ferdinand VII 1817 and, much less frequently the Charles III 1778 dates can be considered as available (although they are, naturally, expensive coins in any case).

However, little else is known about the bust (struck from 1778 onwards, as we will see) series of colonial gold coins struck at the Nueva Guatemala mint. In particular, the corresponding minor gold coins among this series are treated very superficially in the standard references.

These short articles will cover the Charles III gold coins struck at the Nueva Guatemala (NG) mint. They are basically an extract from the current draft paper on Guatemalean colonial coins struck bertween 1776 and 1821 I am now working on, and which is essentially a continuation of my previously published work on the issues struck at the (Antigua) Guatemala mint between 1733 and 1776: Book on the Guatemala Mint 1733-1776.

Although I will limit their scope to analyze the coins themselves and their current rarity and thus will not expand much on historical facts relating to these coins, these articles are nevertheless important, since they will provide for the first time accurate or “hard” data on all of these issues. This new information will be mostly based on previously unpublished documentation that we were fortunate to locate in the Archivo General de Centro América (A. G. C. A.) in Guatemala City.