One Massive Chinese 12 Oz Silver Coin

Beautiful coin!

Very nice coin.

It's a very interesting and super nice coin.
Beautiful to exhibit in a memorabilia cabinet to be located in any Living Room
Thanks for sharing

Here's another example for 465 euros. http://www.ma-shops.com/stadler/ite...2004&lang=en

Doesn't appear on the market very often.

Nice bullion item a very pretty "coin" and a mintage of under 4,000 pieces. I am hesitant to refer to bullion issues as coins, but for our purposes it is a coin.

Personally, I am always very cautious when paying a premium over bullion for such an issue. Rarity in simple terms of numbers is terribly misleading for coins like this. There are many similar silver issues with low mintages where current market value is spot less the normal margin. So when you think about selling don't get your hope up that the low mintage will get bids of spot plus any percentage.

I would advise that you do an SG as soon as possible to preclude a forgery.

I did an SG on a 12 ounce bullion coin for a local coin Dealer about a year or so ago. I can't recall the exact date on the coin but I think it was 1992 or 1993. The dealer (a good friend) was trying to sell it and the buyer didn't think it "felt right". I became the arbitrator on the deal because I knew both parties and they both trusted me.

The piece was definitely struck - I have no doubt about that and the surfaces appeared to be normal mirror proof with frosted elements - so the dies used were properly prepared. I could not determine if they were original dies or not. I have not seen this type of coin too often. The coin was exactly the proper weight. We did not have the dimensions as hand so a physical measurement check was NOT done. It would have likely detected the problem. The surface was pure silver (the dealer had done an acid test on the edge).

But in hand (to me) it felt underweight. It was too large to be so light if you get my drift. I was suspicious as soon as I lifted it.

The dealer had taken it in as a bullion purchase and had paid over $120 for it, but an SG revealed a Copper-nickel core. The SG was just under 9.00. (Theoretically it was 6 or 7 % silver.)

After the SG test was done - we cut into the edge of the coin to expose the color change which was a fraction of a mm below the surface. The coin was not in my opinion electroplated - at least not using any process I had ever seen. The pure silver layer was as thick or thicker than you see on old Sheffield Laminates. It was not a layer of a couple 1000ths of an inch - YOU COULD SEE THE LAYER CLEARLY without magnification. A small scratch did not reveal the forgery because it did not get in far enough.

So, I am saying all that to indicate that you should be careful with this particular issue. My friend the dealer lost over $100 on the transaction (he did get a few dollars from the smelter) and he had done as much as any dealer normally does to protect himself. It would have been a great buy for me but he refused to sell it.

It was caught by a savvy buyer with a gut feeling that something was wrong.

Does anyone know the exact dimensions for the 12 oz. Chinese coin? A simple measurement would confirm the density as well as SG because the coin is SO BIG.

New record: 1681USD. Speechless...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...260694703190