Thoughts, Advice, Reactions To Some Oddly Framed Coins.

At a $105, I would pass on this group of world coins. I'd figure out face value for those that can be spent (like the 5 CHF) and add melt for the others to determine the max I would pay.

Okay a couple of decent silver coins there, but why place it with rubbish like a Zambian Kwacha and that AWFUL Churchill Crown.

In fact a lot of silver, French 50 Franc coin, a silver German 5 marks and silver 500 Lire, at least 2 Silver half dollars and a badly toned Morgan. But why in gods name add some junk pieces like the Churchill and the unidentified cupronickel crown in the middle second row.

Hard to sew from the photos, but looks like a decent 2-3 oz of silver in there. $60-75 wouldn't be unreasonable, IMO

So I bought these two today... Looking for a project...here's the results...

Based on the years of the coins I think these were framed around 1973-1974...the frame quality and aesthetic support this... As well as the terrible glue....


Acetone worked...



These are the key finds...


There is a bunch of junk junk... A 1972 d Eisenhower dollar a.72 Kennedy half... I'm able to sell some of the lower grade silver locally... I paid €90 for both frames...I should get a bit back out of the lower coins... The french.bronze is interesting....

@jim, I would agree if I didn't see so many of these type of horrible displays all over Rome. By my calculation, it's about $75 in just melt - ie Morgan and 10 Franc at $15 each. I have about 15 other junk coins. All of the lower than 90% coins - except the 40% halves - I will sell on and recover a good chunk of what I spent. At the end of this, I will have the Morgan, the 10 Franc, a Franklin and 64 Kennedy half, 4 40% halves - 20 swiss francs which are face value - and a french bronze. I figure - Morgan $15, 10 Franc $15, 64 Kennedy $7.50, Franklin $7.50, 20 Francs approx. $20, the French bronze ? - and I'll sell the rest on.

It was apparently a 'thing' in the 60s and 70s here. I see framed displays of absolute pure junk - no silver at all - from the 60s and 70s.

Tourist items here are far far more obviously tourist oriented, ie fake roman coins, etc.

Thanks @era. I'm reading a lot of conflicting information on how best to go about removing the glue from this medal... Acetone? Acetone on a q tip? Other suggestions? Let me know what you think...

Art.

The 1970s was the height of the world coin craze. Franklin Mint was churning out all kinds of overpriced mass-produced coins. Obviously, some coin dealer in Italy thought they could do some "value adding" by getting a bunch of random world coins, gluing them onto a frame all artistic-like, and selling them for twice the price. If there really are so many of them littering Italy right now, then clearly, their marketing tactic was successful too.

And I have to say, their packaging seems to have fared better than Franklin Mint's packaging at preserving the coins. Yeah, there's glue stains, but the blue pseudo-velvet background doesn't seem to have destroyed the coins as much as Franklin Mint packaging did. I fully expected the other side of that copper medal to be a corroded mess.