1923 Threepence. Does It Make The Grade?

Your grading guess record here on CCF is pretty good.
If qualified opinions here agree with you, I'll buy it.

unless someone else does..

If echidna says it's fake, you should take his word on it.

He is a well respected numismatist and knows what he's talking about.

Especially with respect to Pre-Decimals.

Not happy with the grading of the 'MS64', either.
Only six diamonds in the headband of the crown.

All so called MS64's should have all eight diamonds sharply struck.

I will let others make up their own minds:
Why is it so?*

* - Professor Julius Sumner - Miller.

I have some concerns.
Echidna is sure the threepences are fake (dodgy rims) but is uncertain about the 1911 shilling (more subtle rim).
As Nancy correctly states Echidna is an expert in the series. So if an expert is uncertain about a shilling then the fakes are reallyclose to perfection.
Now some of you are saying that the OP should only buy a graded coin to avoid the fakes, but even with the coin in hand will they spot the fakes? They have in the past slabbed an obvious fake 1923 halfpenny and they regularly slab 1920 CBL pennies as the more pricey 1920 No Dot. After all the graders are American and not experts in our coins.
Once the fakers sort out the rim problem then what? How will we spot the fakes then?

The T does look a 7, but his photo needed huge magnification and is unclear.

Museum Victoria's coin is essentially untouched since day.1 and some of it's letters look off too.

The scroll AD spacing is not uniform across the three certified coins, Museum.Vic and Universal Auction are different.




We won't.

Nobody here is the final word if armed only with a poor photo. The seller has the benefit of any reasonable doubt by default.

Ok,different Dies,but the Coin,even putting the Patina and rim aside,doesn't look correct to me,there is detail missing on various parts of the Coin.
After saying that my basic Coin knowledge was from 1960 to 1969 and then from the 1990's via the various Forums so I'm probably not the ideal person on this Forum to be offering opinions one way or the other.

Hi.




This forum is pretty good for free help, but the 1923 3d is a very tough nut to crack. It is often poorly struck and deceptively hard to grade.

It is fine for people to help others here with opinions, but when opinions turn into ego driven rubbish as happened here, it's unhelpful.

I have purchased a semi-valuable coin from this seller before and it is here on CCF, look at my post in the Australian Variety and Error Coins, Bank Notes, Paper Money forum.

That coin has the exact same characteristics as this one which a handful have called out as fake. However there - nobody said a bad word about it. That coin is in superb condition and is in transit to NGC USA. It will get a monster grade but will be dropped a point or two because at the instant it was struck, a tiny thread or bristle was there and created a strike-through. They (tiny strike-through errors) are only penalized by NGC and PCGS if they are conspicuous. If the s-thru is hiding - the coin will be graded as if it isn't there.

The best site by far for learning about errors and things that go wrong in coin minting is http://www.error-ref.com and it's well worth a bookmark and read.

Heritage's auction site has spectacular coin photography, and is a good resource as all coins from past sales are viewable.




Two things.

1. I asked people I consider very highly qualified to make the call - verdict good.

2. While grateful for the polite input here [some of which helped], in the end I made my own call based on my knowledge.




It's only a good buy if it hits MS grade, as it's only worth 400-500 in AU58. It's value goes sky-high in MS grades. Same for many George V Australian coins. I made him an offer and so far haven't heard back.

Cheers and thanks for your interest.