What Grading Would You Give For This 1930 Penny?

I'd grade this one Fine. What worries me more is the colour; why is it pink? The colour makes it look like the victim of an old, botched cleaning job.

As for "investment-grade", well, it's a 1930 penny - all 1930 pennies are "investment-grade", unless they've got roadkill or fire damage. The book value for a 1930 penny in Fine is US$10,000 and "book values" for rare coins are out the window since COVID. You'd likely have to pay more than that for a Fine coin at auction.

The other problem is of course authentication; the letter from the Mint is a fascinating piece of evidence for the coin's provenance (and yes, up until the early 1980s the Mint actually used to do this; for a small fee you could mail coins to them for authentication), but unfortunately it is essentially worthless for marketplace authentication these days; the letter could be fake, or the letter could be genuine but the coin has since been swapped out for a fake.

Sap and ryurazu. Many thanks for your feedback. The seller says he inherited the coin from his grandad. He works at the mines, which leads me to suggest that if this were a deliberate fake then he (probably) wouldn't be doing it for the money. He admits that the coin has been handled alot throughout the years and bought out as a show piece during friends and family visits.

Could you possibly suggest a respected industry grader to take the coin to have it graded and authenticated?

I am located in Adelaide and Queensland. Many thanks

This coin is a worthless fake.
Its obvious.

to the Community!

Your post was moved to the appropriate forum for the proper attention.

I agree, its hard to say if its real or not.

I would check with the mint, to see if a person with that name worked there in 1981 and if they were checking old coins for authenticity. (Just checked, seems he was there in 1975 and 1986 verifying the existence of 1985 10 cent coins).

But the colour on the coin is so fishy its not true, the Rev looks EF and the Obv looks fine and no fine coin has that much lustre. There was a Florin that had this dissimilarity as well and it was a Chinese fake. The shining up job looks recent as its clean and shiny and not had time to wear. If it was from 1981 it would have aged more.

At the same time, the letter looks old and people still used old mechanical typewriters then. Its a hard one. But I will veer on the side of fake. The letter could be a photocopy or referring to a different coin or 1930 penny (Later ones often had photos of the coin in question).

Yet 1980/81 was the peak of the collectibles boom and I could see people desparately spending their cash on rare coins and stamps.

The first post was atrocious spelling and grammar, yet their later post had reasonable spelling and grammar and that is rich coming from me!

Only if the seller knows it's fake.

" common " of " commonwealth " lettering seems ok, BUT , have a good look at the gradual increasing size of the lettering from " wealth " all the way to the last " A " of Australia.

Even the " TRA " of AusTRAlia is out of kilter.

The colour of the coin looks exactly like the pennies and halfpennies I used to leave overnight in the early1960's in a saucer of the original Coca Cola ( which really now tastes like Pepsi or watered down turps ), and the pennies and halfpennies always came out a very light coloured copper the next morning.

Oh,well, I lived and learnt and I could still spend my now much brighter newspaper selling tips on 1/2d worth of chocolate bullets (10x) and 1d worth of other mixed lollies. Much joy.

To me that appears to be because the coin is tilted to avoid glare in the picture. The coin is out of round also because of that. This makes the right side of the coin closer to the lens and that makes the writing appear larger.