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 Replies: 16 / Views: 5,927 |
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
841 Posts |
Anyone have any idea as to what the acceptable tolerances are when weighing coins to see if fake.
Cheers
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Valued Member
United States
419 Posts |
If you go on PCGS coin facts, it lists the correct weights for each coin.
Alex
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Pillar of the Community
 Australia
841 Posts |
 Jesus it's hard getting good help these days, I'm in AUSTRALIA so US coins are useless to me sorry mate. And I'm after the acceptable tolerances of coins eg a crown should weigh 28.27grams so I want to know if 28.01grams would be real, fake or that's acceptable due to wear and tear from circulation..any AUSTRALIAN dealers here that would know? How much weight is acceptable for a coin to lose during it's time in circulation? As I get more into coins I can see my questions need more professional help so any advice on a good site or some one that knows what they're talking about would be greatly appreciated? |
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
2624 Posts |
I think the best way to go about answering this question is to take a couple of coins of a similar size and material to the one you are talking about. One worn and one in good condition and see what the difference in weight is. That would give you a rough idea what you would expect to lose. Presumably there is very little difference in the weight of the blank a certain coin gets struck from and the listed weight refers to that but only with experience will you be able to judge what is a reasonable variance.
The trouble with the question is that a soft material like gold will wear more (for circulated coins) and lose a fair bit of weight, as would a large copper coin like a cartwheel penny. An aluminium coin weighs so little that that small difference would be much more relevant perhaps... what I am saying is that size, material and condition all play their parts; so judgement is called for. That is just for milled coins obviously, hammered coins regularly got clipped etc and with age may have shed more weight anyway.
I would look up some weights for your older more worn coins and weigh them up it will give you an idea how far out you are likely to be on a genuine item, then when assessing new coins if you are outside those parameters for a comparable coin it will be a tip off that you may not have the real deal.
Edited by DavidUK
08/03/2012 7:14 pm
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Moderator
 Australia
16837 Posts |
The "remedy", or acceptable tolerance of coins coming out of Australian mints, was defined in the Schedules appended to the Coinage Acts of 1909, 1936 and 1947. You can download a PDF copy of the combined Acts by clicking here. According to the 1936 Schedule, a crown had a remedy of 1 part in 220 weight and 4 parts in 1000 fineness. Since the scheduled weight was 28.2759 grams, that's plus or minus 0.1285 grams. So an uncirculated crown isn't supposed to weigh less than 28.147 grams. In practice, the mints usually attained much tighter tolerances than this. This doesn't, of course, take into account wear. An extremely worn crown could have lost 5% of its weight (down to below 27 grams) and still be recognizable as a crown, but the banks were in theory supposed to withdraw any coin they found to be below the legal tolerance specified in the Coinage Act. Whether they actually did or not depended on how well-supplied the bank was with cash that day. A circulated crown weighing 28.01 grams has lost 1% of it's weight; that's double the legal tolerance, but only one-fifth of what's physically possible. So we'd need more details on how worn the coin looks before making a judgement. In other words, a crown weighing 28.01 grams is suspicious, but still too close to call. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Valued Member
Australia
369 Posts |
There is a lot of variance in weight after the decimal point even in uncirculated coins.Just try weighing a few thousand coins from mint rolls and you will end up with a pile of "suspicious" coins. No one will ever convince me that they make all blanks exactly the same weight. Weighing coins should only be used to confirm a "dodgy" looking coin. In my opinion a coin weighing 2 grams less than it should would be "suspicious" but does not mean it's a fake. Just my opinion
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
7096 Posts |
Quote:
Anyone have any idea as to what the acceptable tolerances are when weighing coins to see if fake.
Cheers Get hold of a copy of rennics or McDonald's, The specs for every Australian coin is listed in these coin guides  |
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
841 Posts |
Thanks team, we're on the right track but not quite there yet. What my main problem is that I want to buy some good/nice coins and after seeing so many post about fake coins I'm really confused and would really like to know what to look for so does anyone know if there's a book or how the dealers know how to tell real from fake and I used the example of a crown as someone posted a pic of a fake next to a real one and I've seen other post where they show the fake and real one. Sorry I'm asking all these stupid questions but I'm a bit concerned as there seems to be more and more fakes getting around and being on DSP and with so many traps around I can't afford to make costly mistakes so ANY help is so greatly appreciated, thank you  |
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
1005 Posts |
AJ,
What to look for will be different for different coins.
Maybe asking "I want to buy X, what should I look out for?" would work better?
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
4411 Posts |
There's always someone here to help. I would hypothesise most dealers don't have a piece of paper with info regarding fakes but instead know what to look for after much experience. I think you're fairly safe with Aussie coins unless you're venturing into key dates in which case just looking at the coin closely will give signs of a fake eg. lettering, date, possibly pitting, dullness. My personal feeling is people worry about fakes too much. Stick to buying from a reputable dealer in Australia and you shouldn't have too many problems. I know you don't have much access to coins shops but quite a few Aussie dealers have ventured into ebay or their own sites now so you can go down that route for any scarcer coins. |
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Valued Member
Australia
176 Posts |
I was at a dealers a couple of weeks ago and a gent brought in a Queen Victoria half sovereign for appraisal. The coin was given to their specialist who looked at it under light for about 30 seconds and unfortunately then had to advise the customer that it was a fake. He proceeded to explain the 4 or 5 reasons why he was of that opinion - no checking to books, papers etc. Certainly backed up enworb's comments.
Pedro
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
841 Posts |
 I wish I lived near a dealer..but she's all good as I'm starting my our book  I'm going over a heap of different posts and if I can't send it to my self in an email I take a pic  ..more than one way to skin a cat  Oh and buy the way sap, thanks very much for that info as it was a very interesting read, much appreciated mate |
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
2624 Posts |
Since I ussed to be a pawnbroker I am very adept at spotting fake watches, very often before the person even takes it off their wrist.
People often used to ask me how I knew and there were many reasons for many different brands. Having handled the real thing day-in and day-out I knew what to expect and what not to.
I am sure this is the same for coins, there is no substitute for experience.
Having said that with watches there are one or two things that you can look for (split pin being used in place of screws for instance in watch bracelets, the quality of gold plating etc etc) and the same with coins (quality of edge markings, alignment of the obverse/reverse etc) but its hard to give X,Y and Z steps to look for to give an answer.
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
2180 Posts |
Reading these forums and looking at the pictures people post is useful to get to know what you're looking for. If you look at enough photos of 1930 pennies for example, a modified digit forgery should at least seem odd.
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
841 Posts |
and if you want to know the secret to taking pic's off the computer without the funny lines everywhere, all you have to do is..CHHHHHT we apologise for this break in transition, your usually scheduled program will resume shortly, this program is proudly bought to you by AJ entertainment inc pty ltd  nah just joking, that one will cost ya Nah nah I'll be good, I take them with super macro about 2 foot away and zoom in and no funny line..well it works for me |
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
4411 Posts |
I hate those lines  The one thing an ipad is good for is taking screen shots easily so I'm alright now. |
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Replies: 16 / Views: 5,927 |
Posted 08/03/2012 5:50 pm
