Need Help With Identifying The Specifics Of 1817 King George III Gold Coin

Thanks for the feedback, I have done a streak test that comes up gold, and copper will scratch it so it is less hard than copper. Is there a chance it could have been struck in gold in error instead of silver?

The porous surface, and the black coating, both point towards this being made of cast brass and not gold. But the weight would be a simple enough test. A normal silver halfcrown weighs 14.14 grams. An actual gold coin the size of a halfcrown would weigh significantly more than that, something like 25 grams. A brass fake would weigh considerably less than 14 grams.


No. For this coin to be actually made of gold, you would need a very odd chain of events to take place:
- Someone would have needed to steal some government gold to make a gold blank the size of a halfcrown, for some reason (no British gold coins are the size of a halfcrown, so it would have had to be specially made).
- You would then have needed to sneak in after hours and fire up the halfcrown coin press to strike your gold coin.
- You then need to drop your gold coin into aqua regia, to make it look all damaged and pitted like that. You'd also have to hack at it with a knife, for some reason.
- Then, for some reason, you decide to paint your gold halfcrown black (brass will naturally turn black in air, but gold won't).

That's all rather improbable, compared to the much simpler explanation, that your coin is a brass counterfeit halfcrown.

Your American coin looks more mangled than mint error to me, but you're probably better off starting a new separate thread about it in the US Modern Errors thread.

to the Community!

Thank you for the updated information. This will help others to learn in the future.