Celyon Quarter Farthing 1/4

I just did a search on ebay uk for quarter farthings. Reasonable quality coins are being offered at around £80 to £120. Top quality ones are around x2 or x3.

Except I saw a group of 5 with different dates offered for £19 !!!

I bought this with both eyes open. At that price it is too good to be true and almost certainly is. At less than £4 each for possibly modern counterfeits, I will accept that. Once they arrive I will put up pics for comment.

Your coin appears to have remains of a coating between letters on the reverse. I also note wonky letters above Victorias head. Can anyone cast light on this?

I would be curious if a sold items search shows up any that have actually sold.

Authentic ones (presumably) can be seen here: https://www.coinarchives.com/30ae38...age00830.jpg
That group sold for 320 pounds in October, or an average of less than $100 each.

I agree those Ns don't look right, though the link shows some misalignment of the Ns on the 1839.

I did an ebay "sold" search out of curiosity. Prices varied enormously.

I did find objects described as "pobjoy anniversary restrikes", sometimes mentioned as 150th and once as 175th anniversary. The latter is impressive for an original issued in the early 1850's. Where is my tardis...?

I could not find any details on these alleged restrikes. Does anyone have any info on when they were released, and how to identify them? Was Pobjoy even involved at all, or was their name unofficially borrowed?

Peck states the weight range of a quarter farthing is 16.6 to 19.2 grains, with an average of 18.13.

At 15.432 grains = 1g, I work these out as 1.08g, 1.24g and 1.17g respectively to 2dp.

Clayton gives diameter as 13.5mm.

The coin as shown does not look good to my eye. All of the examples I have seen are far sharper.

You will need a very accurate scale accurate to 0.001 at the very least and a 0.0001 gram scale would be preferable. I am NOT referring to the cheap scales with three or four digit readouts. Most non-laboratory balances have a potential 2% error rate - too high for this purpose since 2% of 20 grams is 0.4 grams. Expect to spend north of $500 for a scale of that accuracy.

I agree that examples I take as "real" (e.g. the lot that sold at Spink) have sharper lettering.
The earlier link I posted shows that examples of this reproduction (listed as such) are selling for $3.50 on a site called bonanza, and that the OP's coin is listed on a couple of sites for $50 and 65.

I, like you, found these same coins for a price that was to good to pass up. Five for $28. I was surprised to find so many fake ones on ebay.

gdobie You say:

https://goccf.com/ebay ebay /a ." target="_blank" rel="nofollow">I was surprised to find so many fake ones on a target= _blank id= keywords href= https://goccf.com/ebay ebay /a .

That is actually a typical response made by most people who have gotten to know ebay fairly well. I worked for ebay as an authenticator of world coins until they ceased in house authentication in 2013.

Even at the best, with 8 professional authenticators working full time on this project, we never managed to get ebay below about 2% counterfeits.

At present I still watch one type of coin - Spanish Colonial and Mexican 8Rs. The current rate of auctions that should be stopped ranges from 6-10%. The number of Numismatic Forgeries (worthless fakes) averages 3 times the number of Contemporary Circulating Counterfeits (valuable type).