wizened's Last 20 Posts
| 8 Reales 1803 - Real Or Fake?
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
 Posted 09/06/2024 9:43 pm
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I'd vote with TwoKopeiki and say real.
I have not seen a coin that had that extent of overlap on the edge design, but I have seen a few with extensive overlap with one edge seemingly on top of another edge.
The coin details look good enough.
But as it is said that this is a commonly faked coin, I would certainly do the magnet stick test, magnet slide test, and specific gravity test to be sure. |
| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| Anyone Know Where To Buy Communist-Era Cuban Coins?
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 08/01/2024 1:05 pm
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I had a 40 centavos 1915 Cuba coin for sale on Ebay and it was up for 2 weeks or so, but ebay just sent me a notice the listing was cancelled because of the "Embargoed goods policy." The coin was listed as 40 centavos Patria & Libertad.
My understanding is that SAP is correct when he stated: "Pretty much anyone off-eBay will happily sell you pre-revolution coinage, since they're not covered by the US trade embargo."
It seems odd to me how diligent ebay is in blocking sales of legitimate listings, while they don't seem to have concerns about all the fake coins sold out of China. I just did a search for 8 reales closed listings, and the number of fake 8 reales sold is sad. And sometimes the price gets bid up to a level as though the coin was real. At least they appear to have blocked the guy selling out of Poland who had dozens and dozens of fake coins. He would sell until he was cancelled in one ID, and then just get another.
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| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| Anyone Know Where To Buy Communist-Era Cuban Coins?
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 07/19/2024 9:13 pm
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If you find those coins on ebay, they are not identified as from Cuba.
Here is a European ebay listing for one, and it too is careful not to say Cuba.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/375542546845
Somehow that coin seems fake to me. If not fake, heavily worn, and not VF.
NGC lists prices for Cuban coins as fairly low, often less than 1.5x melt value. I wonder if the bans affect the valuations.
You can find Cuban coins at coin shops if they are shops that carry foreign coins. I think the design of the Pesos from 1934 to 19xx (the lady's face design) is rather nice.
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| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| Fake Gela Tetradrachm
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 06/19/2024 3:50 pm
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[
I am 99% sure this is a fake. Obtained at local coin shop in the cheap coin bin. But out of curiosity I checked it out a little when I got home and it was not obviously fake. 17.82 grams, about right. Specific density 10.06, which would equate to 75% silver if it were a silver coin. 4mm thick. 22-24mm diameter. Quality of impression very good. It seems to me to have casting bubbles.
So anyone able to tell me why it is obviously the fake I presume it to be, or does it deserve further consideration as possibly real.
Thanks,
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| | Forum: Ancient, Greek, Roman, and Medieval Coins |
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| 1738 8 Reales Counterstamped - Ebay Auction From China
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 12/26/2023 2:23 pm
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I vote for it being fake. How is it that a seller with so little feedback gets such a rare coin to sell?
Looking carefully at the bottom of the letters, it seems that the T in "ET" and the R in "REX" have indentations, whereas from my limited look in real coins those letters have flat bottoms. I have seen that indentation serif in real coins, but it does not seem to appear in 1738 coins.
That seems to be a very high quality fake. Who knows, coin in hand, you might accept it as real. Or maybe the weight is off, or the material (although I suspect for such a coin they would have used .900 silver).
So much crap on ebay. I keep seeing the guy from Poland sell and sell stuff that should not fool anybody, but gets bids, and sometimes gets bids up to nominal value of the coin (if were real). After awhile and getting complaints he just re-boots with another name.
I have noticed another seller and ask others to look at his stuff:
https://www.ebay.com/str/thechinacollectors
Many nice coins, not obviously fake to look at them. However every single one is pristine silver, like a coin minted this year. How could every one of his coins be obtained in this condition? Very little bidding on these coins, which start at $25, which indicates that most other collectors are skeptical of them.
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| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| How Reliable Are Mintage Figures?
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 12/09/2023 11:54 am
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As I recall there was an Australian penny that was minted in good number, but most never released and instead melted down for subsequent years. So if you find one it is a rare coin despite high mintage.
In Honduras in the early release of a Peso (1880s or so) the mint came to recognize that the coins contained about 1% gold, so the mint was taking coins out of circulation to melt them for the gold. So those Peso's have a fairly high value despite the mintage numbers.
I believe there were whole mintages of Mexican crowns sent to China. If you got one without a chopmark it would be unusual I suppose.
There are other stories like this but they are unusual. In general mintage figures should give a good indication of coin rarity. |
| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| Early Coins From Haiti
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 12/09/2023 11:43 am
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Good points. I checked French Revolution year one for coins (An 1) was 1791. It would make sense that Haiti would use their own revolution to reset the calendar. But they did eventually go back to traditional dating, as did the French.
I have a number of the Haitian coins, and I do not recall seeing edge reeding on any. My guess is that the smaller coins never got the reeding, although it may be that the reeding simply wore off with use.
It is unusual for a coinage to have such minimal information available on standards and mints. I'd do a specific gravity test but the primitive way I do such tests is not suitable to smaller coins. The silver seems solid enough, so I would guess in the range of 90% purity, with perhaps a lot of variation year to year, month to moth. |
| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| Early Coins From Haiti
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 12/08/2023 4:33 pm
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Coin collecting so often leads to interesting history. I doubt if I would know much of Haiti otherwise. It was the second country in the hemisphere to gain independence, but the first to gain independence as a slave rebellion. It was relatively rich insofar as it produced sugar, which was a valuable cash crop in those days. Haiti supported other rebellions on the condition that any liberated countries abolish slavery.
Haiti became independent in 1804. Early coinage is confusing. It initially seems to have been continuance of French Livre coinage. I have never seen such coins and suspect they would be quite valuable. The Haiti Gourde became the currency in 1813.
The earlier silver coins of the Gourde system are interesting: 6, 12, 25, 50, and 100 centimes. 100 centimes weighed 10 grams etc. I have looked and can find little history of the minting of coins. No mention of a mint, or of purity (simply reported as being silver), or of method of manufacture. Numista reports the edge as being smooth. I surmise that the coins were made on the island by primitive means. The silver might be from foreign silver coins melted for the purpose. The manufacturing may have been familiar to a Roman, or certainly to the colonial Spanish mint workers.
They used the French dating system, An 1, An 2 etc, dating from the French revolution. They kept using that system after the French had abandoned it in 1815. The coin above is dated An 25, or 1828 by conventional dating.
One interesting thing about the coin pictured above is that it has serrations for maybe 70% of the edge. I have not seen that on other Haiti coins of the period.
Any further insights into this interesting coinage would be appreciated.
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| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| The Rise And Fall Of The Indochinese Piastre
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 06/24/2023 01:54 am
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That was a great summary. All that mix of politics, colonization, history, economics, etc, that makes coin collecting so interesting.
I found the prices of hotels, etc., interesting.
You mentioned at one point counterfeits that were barely counterfeits, insofar as the counterfeiter used silver, and only gained the value of Seigniorage that otherwise would have gone to the mint. There was a fellow in Australia who did the same with I believe Florins in the 1920's. I have been looking to get one of his coins, but supposedly they were so well done most were never detected.
I learnt early that for whatever reasons the Piastre coins were heavily counterfeited, and indeed I have found a few here and there, even with dealers. Too bad as it discouraged me from buying up the coins, which do not sell at too much of a premium to melt value. I wonder if perhaps other trade dollars have a similar rate of fakery (that is not detected), or if indeed Piastres are outliers, why that is so.
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| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| Fernando VII 1821 8 Reale
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 06/18/2023 1:35 pm
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That coin looks fake AH, however,
The royalist mints that remained operating in the hinterlands in 1821, 1822 were not operating to anything close to theoretical specs.
Numista reports Chihuahua mint going to 1822, and reports the coins to usually be overstrikes of earlier 8 reales, countermarked 8 reales, and some other oddities. So likely genuine coins of the date would not have a good edge or good appearance. Possible even that coins coming from the mints would be greatly defective.
That said, I doubt the coin is real. Supposedly the assayer was RP for Chihuahua, and where is that on the coin? Is that an "F" with no second initial for assayer? that is quite odd.
I would not totally give up on it, but put it in the category of most likely counterfeit. Who knows, could be contemporary counterfeit, which is another question that others know more about.
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| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| 1936 Italy 20 Lire Coin
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 04/28/2023 6:51 pm
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So, the story how I got this coin. About 5 years ago I won an ebay auction for a 5 lire crown coin, nothing special, mostly a stacker coin. Instead I was sent this coin, which if real could be worth $1,000. I did not think it was genuine, but not clearly a fake, and wrote the guy about the "mix-up", and said if he wanted I would just keep it and let it go at that, figuring I got a 20 gram silver coin instead of a 25 gram silver coin (if I was right about it being silver). He did not ask for the coin back.
As to why it is fake, the circumstances of how I got it makes me believe that. Maybe the seller tried to slab it and learned about it, and then found a way to get something out of it.
A guy at a coin shop looked at the distorted/dinged edge shown in my third picture and said maybe that is where a casting was filled. Counterfeits of the coin are out there.
https://www.ngccoin.in/resources/co...op/world/12/
They report: "Most counterfeit examples of this type are older transfer die fakes. While they are pretty high quality, they often have spikes emerging from the reeding."
There was a post about another coin like it 3 years ago here. That coin looks more questionable to me. Commentary suggested that looking at the edge carefully could be key to making a determination.
https://goccf.com/t/380915
The coin looks fairly good. Nothing is that obviously wrong with it. If it were a $60 coin I might figure it was genuine. It was how I got the coin that makes me believe it is fake, and the fact that that more than a few counterfeits are out there.
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| | Forum: World Variety and Error Coins |
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| 1820 MO Jj Collar Error?
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 04/24/2023 8:15 pm
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I have a number of 8 reales with a similar pattern where the edge application tended to waiver and ended up towards one side of the coin edge, leaving some of the coin edge without the designed edge on it. Your coin is a strong example of that happening.
1820 was towards the end of the Royalist mints being in operation in Mexico. Standards were slipping. |
| | Forum: World Variety and Error Coins |
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| Fat Man Dollar Real Or Fake
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 02/17/2023 5:58 pm
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The value? People are saying $150 or so, but look at sources.
Ebay recently sold this one for $400: 1920 L&M-77 $1 Yuan Shih-kai Fat Man Silver Dollar Hainan Issue NGC AU Details
This for $533: 1920 PCGS UNC [cleaned] Detail Y-329 LM-77 Fat Man Silver Dollar China $1 Coin #26774A
That's prices for AU and UNC coins sold on ebay with details.
NGC rates the coin in XF at $500
I am still stuck on the hair, which if real, could be UNC or better in grade.
True it is cleaned, which may be what makes it look off. But the ebay UNC coin sold is cleaned too, and it sold at $533.
Okay the coin if real at $1000 appears excessive, but I remain in the belief that it would be worthwhile to slab the coin, after doing a specific gravity test and measuring a specific weight to verify it meets proper specs.
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| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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| Fat Man Dollar Real Or Fake
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wizened
Valued Member
United States
59 Posts |
Posted 02/15/2023 1:56 pm
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That coin seems off to me, at least on the fatman side. The hair looks wrong, as does the mustache.
I checked ebay to find a slabbed MS 64 fatman sold with many bids, and the hair and mustache are different.
This coin is heavily counterfeited.
If real, it would be a very high grade coin to have so little wear. Send it off for grading, and if real it would be worth well over $1,000 I think. But do specific gravity and precise weight tests first, as if it is fake you might determine that without cost.
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| | Forum: World Coins and Commemoratives |
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