Thoughts On Authenticity Of This $10 Gold

It would be best if you attached these images to your original thread.

My guess would be it's probably not genuine.

I still think the disparate lighting makes it hard to compare these coins with certainty.

I have purchased (in the past) a couple of fake $2 1/2 gold liberty coins latter date in the 1902-1905 range. What I learned was the denticles were too crisp and clean compared to the genuine examples. Consider this coin is a jewelry piece, it has also been polished heavily, thus changing the luster and small die details that one would use to verify certain die diagnostics.

I can't say one way or the other either, but I'd be wary and want a guarantee from the seller. At least the fakes I bought were all solid gold and actually a touch heavy, so I didn't do badly, as I paid around bullion cost for them at a coin show. I was the dealer and I bought them off an elderly lady - go figure.

EDIT: fortcollins, interesting thought, I was told my quarter eagles were likely middle eastern manufactured. Never knew why, but that concept certainly add plausibility to the story of origin.

Coinfrog, I agree. The lighting in the photo and condition of the coin make it impossible to say with certainty one way or the other.

I thought they were made to evade the ban on owning gold in the US, by using the numismatic exception. I hadn't read that there was also an issue with conflict gold in the ME but that sounds reasonable too.

The following is from Coinweek:

"Counterfeit gold coins exist for virtually every date of US gold coins. The Middle East fakes were generally not intended to fool collectors. Rather, many of the spurious pieces originated in 1960s and '70s in the Middle East (particularly Lebanon), where merchants preferred gold in coin form as a store of value. The merchants were not particularly concerned with the authenticity of the coin as long as it had the correct weight and composition.

A number of these Middle Eastern fakes ended up in the US, where private ownership of gold was illegal until December 31, 1974. Many of them were likely imported by people who wanted to own gold coins, but could not legally acquire genuine US gold coins domestically".