Baldwin $20 Dollar Coin (Fake)

I did forget to mention that the coin was found in 1977. Also, my mother took the coin to a dealer at the time her told her it was a counterfeit, but offered her $900.00 for it. Just curious why he would make an offer if this is a valueless coin.

well, we assumed it had to be fake as the head doesn't match the photos we have seen for that year. It actually matches (if I remember correctly) the 5 dollar gold coin. As for the color of it we were attributing that to the fact that it was buried for at least 80 or 90 years. We do not think it is gold. If you notice in the photo there is a scratch above the eagles head where my dad scratched trying to see if it was gold underneath the surface but he was hesitant to scratch very deeply. I was more wondering if anyone has ever seen one that matches this exactly.

There was a "baldwin" coin listed on ebay that we saw. Instead of baldwin on the crown it said Paldwin which that seller called an error and was asking for almost 10,000 for his. We saw that there was one bid made and then the listing was removed as the item had been sold privately.

Hi onejinx,

it may very well be a souvenier piece but as I stated above it cannot be from early or mid 20th century as it would already have been under the hotel by then. That's why we were wondering how this coin came to be. The eagle side of it is practically a perfect match and I'm sure that couldn't have been easy to do in late 1800's by just any regular person.

Is it real? I highly doubt it, for no other reason than that it appears to be toned. (That could be the image though.) Gold doesn't tone.

It would be nice to know what year the building was built so as to know when it was probably buried. Replicas were produced in the early 20th century which WOULD be around 80 or 90 years ago. Which is in the time frame you posted, but none the less a date for construction would help.

To me it looks to have toned in a manner similar to brass or bronze, which would also be an indication that it was a replica.

It looks similar to this fake, but the obverse isn't the same.


The obverse looks more similar to this (with the same sort of toning).


If you're convinced that this might be real, then I would suggest to weigh it. It should come out just shy of .9675 oz.

There was quite a bit of confusion about what the weight of these were when they were released (which was one of the reasons they weren't used that much), but after the fact it was found that they were as close to being the correct weight as the U.S. Mint's Double Eagles were.

So if it's close to .9675 oz, I'd send it in for a TPG... if it's off by more than a little than it's a replica.

Actually neither side looks much like the real one.

For starters the genuine onces have Baldwin & C on the coronet. (There wasn't enough room for the o in Co.) The hair curl on the neck on the genuine is placed further back and extends all the way down to the truncation of the bust. The genuine has a distinct tied off hair bun on the head by star 11 that yours does not have. On the reverse the genuine does not have those five large distinct feathers at the base of the eagles left wing. On the eagles right wing all of the feathers point to the side or up, not down. The olive branch has six leaves not seven and it had two prominent berries. The stem of the branch ends in a point and is over the right edge of the Y. The point of te bottom arrowhead is directly over the period. On yours it is to the left of it. There are many other differences but that should be enough o prove it is fake.