Hi,Jantina!

To try to give you a proper & correct answer to your question,we must first identify it exactly. To do this it is mandatory that you also provide accurate weight + diameter of the coin you submit! For the moment,I can tell you that it is in the ''style'' of old colonial Spanish coins. Perhaps some design for Peru and a denomination of 8 Reales... Nothing is sure yet,still we have not the coin's weight + its diameter. Also... Yes,it looks like & should be silver made(if genuine!) but caution must be taken as authentic coins are valuable and counterfeits show frequently on the collectable market!

For our further investigations we wait for the complete data of your coin.

Andi

And,Jantina,I forgot: Please do with your coin a ''magnet test'',to see if it sticks or not to any magnet... We wait for the result!

Andi

Yes,yes... Victory! I succeeded to identify your coin,Jantina!

It is from the spanish colony of Bolivia, 8 Reales,very good silver (931/1000 alloy),27g. weight,year 1718,mint marks P & Y (on the coin),king of Spain Philipp the V-th.

For such a coin,catalogue values/prices are of 350-500 usd for F/VF grades. I guess your coin may be graded even better than VF(well preserved details),so value may be higher than 500$. Besides,in auctions,you may get a few hundreds dollars more than this figure because I saw that collectors ''hunt'' such coins. There is a good market for these colonial old coins.

I may also suggest you to have authenticated & graded your coin by a wellknown,professional,service.(there are some in the U.S.,to choose from). The coin's value worths the fee to pay there.

One more thing: DON'T CLEAN SOMEHOW YOUR COIN ''AS TO LOOK BETTER''! Leave it as it is!

P.S.: Please,I am curious,how much was the rent you received this coin for? The person who gave it to you is a coin collector? Thanks!

Hope I was of help!

Andi

Jantina,one more thing!

I think that the submiting of the coin to a professional grading service is mandatory and in your own interest because:

KM catalogue speaks about a so-called Royal Coinage,done in the spanish colony of Bolivia in several years,with same date and mint marks as the regular coinage. Among these years with ''double'' coinage is also 1718 PY.

I suspect your coin to be of these special series(and not from the regular coinage!) because of its shape,ALMOST PERFECTLY ROUND.

The catalogue says that the ''Royal Coinage'' was done with care,on specially round planchets,prepared for the purpose & using well centered dies,as to prove the ''high'' quality of the minting process to the Viceroy of the colonies or to even the Spanish king.

As such,these specially  minted coins are worth 10 TIMES the regularly minted ''brother'' coins!!! Catalogue values become(please don't faint!) 3000-5000 usd,instead of 350-500$. Maybe you hit a stroke!

Andi

Jantina,besides rarity (more or less) & collectors' demand (also,more or less) there are other 2 very important factors on which is based the collectable value/price of any old coin. These are:

1) authenticity > you know what this means!

2)quality of the coin's preservation (conservation) in time,from its minting process up to our days. This quality of the coin's current conservation status is called GRADE of the coin and the process to establish this grade is called ''grading''. This name was chosen because there is a scale for quality of coins from the lowest(very,very used in circulation & time) to the highest(a mint state coin,perfect).

The quality is almost equal to the ''grade'' of any coin and includes: wear (=absence of engraved details) from its past monetary circulation & time of storage + defects also acquired in time (all sorts,like: scratches,holes in coin,bumps,nicks,shocks,tooling, mounting in jewels,harsh cleaning,etc.)

A ''COIN GRADING SERVICE'' is a company of professionals who make,for each submitted coin,an analyse of all the above exposed criteria and afterwords conclude on the final grade they can give to one or another coin. These grades are marked by different status of a coin:AG / G / VG / F / VF / XF / AU / UNC.= MS(mint state). The AlmostGood is the lowest possible grade and designates  a very,very used & worn coin.

In your U.S. country you have the chance to exist several very trustable, internationally known,such services. To learn more about them,in order to choose one and to put them at work with your coin,I'll send you a Wikipedia note (may be found by Google on the internet).

Please keep me intouch with your further actions,because your coin became somehow a ''child'' if mine.

Andi

Nice coin. Valuable, too. Andi has done his usual "bloodhound" work and sniffed out what is probably a genuine 8 reales (the denomination) from Bolivia when it was a colony of Spain.

It is a "cob" coin, but, more than that, it is a "royal" cob coin, made with special care.

Get a precise weight,

Your coin should be authenticated and graded by a professional service like PCGS, NGC, or ICG (look them up).

The royal cob in my picture is dated 1729. It sold to a collector for $8250 US dollars during a 2022 auction. Yours would probably sell in that neighborhood. If you sold it to a dealer instead of a collector, the dealer might pay $4000 for it.

Sounds like a good plan to me, Jantina.

Neither Andi nor I are true experts in coins like yours. We are making good guesses. If you like, you can contact a true expert in Spanish colonial coinage: Daniel Sedwick. Send him your pictures. He may make an offer on the spot, in which case you will know the ACTUAL value of your coin. His web site:

https://www.sedwickcoins.com/

Before contacting him, you can educate yourself on these coins here:

https://coinquest.com/cgi-bin/cq/coins.pl?action=spanish-colonials

I hope it all works out.