1934/1935 Melbourne Centenary Florin

You should be able to pick up a 65 for that sort of money.

Bit rude to email the seller and call it a replica, no wonder you caused the seller to have apoplexy. The florin is 100% kosher. It matches the PCGS hi-res image when I look it up (there are a couple of tell tale imperfections that appear in the ebay listing and on the PCGS lookup). The PCGS image also show a couple of finer diagnostic marks that match a particular reverse die (I do own a number of florins with the same die markers). Echidna is spot on the money in that an MS65 is easy to obtain (in a PCGS slab) for $1125.
I think the fingerprint is on the slab as it isn't on the PCGS image.

There are actually at least 6 types of centenary florins. Matthew Eddison did a write up about them a few months ago in Coin and Banknote magazine. Nipple, proof, specimen, circulation etc are just some of the adjectives attached to the different dies.
But yes, we have to be careful about all the fakes out there. Many (perhaps even most) centenary florins, '32 florins, '38 crowns that are raw on ebay are fakes and only some of the sellers are honest about it, some are hazy in their descriptions and some outright lie. Watch out for examples in slabs from companies like PCCB as those sellers are almost always scam artists.
Even genuine Centenary florins are offered by scammers. About a year ago I purchased a nice example, the seller threw in postal insurance (I hadn't asked for that) and when the envelope arrived it had a slit on the edge and no coin. The seller then said I should claim the insurance; I smelled a rat and did some digging, found "my" florin listed on a respected dealers website. The scammer had pinched the image and made over $300. I at least got my money back (Paypal) but my concern was a thief now had my address and knew I collected pricy coins. Now I have 4 safes, a new address and have a couple of "little friends" (yes, that's an Al Pacino Scarface reference) to greet any thieves.

apologies,

The ebay number for my last post should read 292282170378

cheers

nealeffendi

There is a special dedicated online Police fraud squad based in Queensland who email you the form to fill out and you email the form back to them with all the details they request, or you can phone them direct. They are quite good with helping most people. Your, or any, local police will not/cannot dedicate any time to the ever growing problem of burglaries, etc.

The reason I mentioned you might have the address, details, etc, of the people you purchased from is, from my experience with " difficult " sellers, is you ring them up. Phone numbers are usually easy to get because you have, or should have, their full name. A few years ago, I actually rang the father of a " difficult " seller who didn't send me the coin rolls I paid for after over 3 weeks had passed.
The first call was " forgotten ", but the second call did the trick because after telling the father that they are going to shortly be contacted by the special very efficient online Police fraud squad. The father became very cooperative, and I received my coin rolls PLUS 2 extra within a week with letter of apology written by the son - the sellers.

I've also called around to two different " difficult " sellers ( 3 year span time ) who live an hour from me in Melbourne, deliberately at dinner time. Got all of the things I paid for, plus $20 for my travel time and trouble, along with a few 1990 mint sets. The sellers, because of me, the unexpected visitor, was very sheepish.

I hope the above is of some useful consideration to you. It pays to keep complete records.

BEWARE !
A coin dealer friend of mine with over 50 years' experience, showed me a really nice Centenary Florin and asked me to comment on it.
He said:
"Have a REALLY close look at it, with this 10X loupe"

After some time, I said
'Nice coin'
-"Have another look"
-'Looks fine to me'
-"Sorry, it's a dud"

He then pointed out why, in detail, that it was a fake.

After the education, the only thing that was a bit more obvious, was that the patina didn't look quite right to me.
He pointed out about six other tiny inconsistencies, that I was unaware of, with Centenary Florins.

That fake joined many others in the dealer's reference collection of fake coins.

To the rest us: Don't get too worried;
it is the only exceptionally deceiving fake Centenary Florin I have seen, but there are probably a few others out there.

I'm currently building up a decent reference collection of Centenary florins and '37-38 Crowns trying to spot every die pair and their markers (mostly die polish lines). With this collection I can identify the genuine from the high grade fakes......but what happens in 10-20 years with the advances in technology, will micro examination of coins spot the super perfect fakes or will the fakes be impossible to spot from the genuine if their tools include the ability to perfectly copy every die polish line?
Any chance Sel that the dealer was wrong? There are die pairs recently identified with only a few known examples and their patina may be different because the die was prepared differently such that the patina on a chromed die is different to that on a normal die, plus the blanks for some coins are different giving a different patina.