Suspicious Silver Coins

Pleased to be of assistance.

Bill.

Thanks valdiman. Afer all your help I'm now pretty sure the Kopeks are good.

I got them from a seller that I didn't trust too much, and bought just a few at a really low price to see if they were good; with the intention of buying many more, which I never did, since I doubted the authencity of the ones I received.

What's worring me the most now is the Morgan dollar that is 0.2mm short in diameter.

Sorry Conder101, you are absolutely right and I made a huge mistake. Since the coin has no mint mark, it's from the Philadelphia mint, and not Denver.

I took some pictures to see if you could help me determing if the missing 0.2mm could be due to wear on the rim:




And here you can see that the diameter doesn't reach the 38mm:


By the way: if it's any help, the coin weights 26.50g. It's 0.23g short, which due to the amount of wear look right to me.

The bottom scale is in centimiters (the numbers indicate centimiters and each line is a milimiter)

The top scale is the one in inches.

I also measured my other Morgan dollars, and even my Peace dollars; all of them are at least 38mm too.

I took a couple of pictures more, and I was comparing them with my other Morgan dollars; and I have to say that if it is a fake, it's a pretty good one. Everything matches: weight, design, silver content, etc... just the diameter -well, and the colour, which is slightly darker- are wrong.

I did measure the diameter all around the coin; it's the same everywhere: 0.2mm shorter than 38mm.

I'm really puzzled by this coin; and I really need to find out if it's authentic, as if I'm goint to return it I need to do it now.

Here are the pictures:

You're right - if this is a fake, it's a good one. It's accurate right down to the slightly-irregular date location - a little left, a little low - which isn't normal for Morgans in general but characteristic of many 1896's. So, if it's a fake, it was cast from a genuine 1896 rather than some generic Morgan die with a date punched in. Yet, the details are sharp enough to discount the idea of a cast.

In your second detail image above - the one with BUS - I note some discrepancies in the rim. There's a line perpendicular to the reeding, and the area nearest the obverse seems to have a void. Furthermore, the reeding itself seems a bit shallow to me.

I'm tentatively thinking that:

1) It's a real coin with a planchet irregularity - maybe the composition is a little "layered" as opposed to a nicely-mixed alloy, and the edge "collapsed" a bit under striking pressure, or....

2) The collar itself was irregular. They were somewhat conical in design, smaller in diameter on the obverse end than the reverse end (obverse was the "hammer" die) to aid in ejection. Perhaps this one was just that slight bit out of spec, and it's a feature that hasn't been noted yet for whatever reason. They may have caught the discrepancy and removed the collar from service before a large number of coins had been struck, or....

3) Based on the obverse detail I called out above, it could possibly be a "tilted partial collar," otherwise known as a "railroad rim." This is an interesting error in which the planchet is not fully seated in the collar when struck, allowing some or all of one side of the rim to ride over the collar. That would make it a very interesting specimen; it's not a common error with Morgans.

I'd keep the coin either way - if it's fake, it has collector interest due to its' accuracy. If it's something else, it has interest due to whatever that "something else" might be.