1652 New England 3 Pence?

Good insight from the minting standards article. This significantly reduces the usefulness of XRF on these coins, since the silver alloy (other than the weight and percent silver) is uncontrolled and the non-silver could be most any metal such as tin, copper, etc. On the other hand the article at least provides what the weight and silver purity standards were so that would screen out potential conterfeits on that basis.

The value of XRF is in determining gold content. If there is none, the coin is suspect of modern fabrication.

California-made sterling-marked 19th century silverware was checked randomly on 4 pieces, and found to vary from 74 to 90.5% silver. None of the pieces came close to the British standard. I would expect the same for the NE piece, and would also expect a large variance among NE pieces. They weren't melting British coins to make these.

The OP remarked on the presence of gold and lead in colonial silver, back on pages 2 & 3, which is also found in his XRF results. I don't know what source he got that from. It seems crazy to me that there is no published composition for the NE coins. They authenticated NE sixpence and shillings without analyzing composition? If so, why does it matter for this coin? And as mentioned way at the beginning of all this, if you're going to make a deceptive collector counterfeit, you just melt some Spanish coins the same as they did in 1652. I feel like we're chasing our tails.

Back to this:


First, the contention is that someone could easily create a punch, and that a firm in the UK was copying colonial silver. If so, where are the fake NE threepence? What do they look like? Where did they get the design? Just one example would give us additional information to go on.

Second, related to the first - I think it's extremely useful to play "which one is different" against known counterfeits. Which of these is a counterfeit?



Now, which of these is a counterfeit?

The Ashmore NE 3D (one of 'em, anyway):
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthope...in-489239661

It seems that the NE 3D would be, not to say Easy but something like that, to fabricate, in a fashion that would fool most everyone. A little extra "post-mint" tooling here and there, and Voila!

What is C4?

So, if your friend has several of these "Mario Fabrications" I presume the value of these fakes is nil and Stacks may not bother with it. The coin holder posted on page 2 is likely also a fake, does the C4 article mention fake envelopes also?

Here's an image that he sent to me

The style appears to be extremely crude compared to the coin in question.

I remain skeptical of larsjan's coin's authenticity just due to the extreme rarity, but it seems to be passing every test so far. I absolutely hope it's the real deal, and you haven't provided any strong evidence to the contrary.