The weight is a bit off...

Greetings, all:
I purchased an 1864 two cent piece recently, and when I weighed it, it turned out to be 5.91 grams (official weight is 6.22 grams). I used the scale at the medical center, which is reliable. That's about a 5% difference, which seems too high to me. The coin itself looks pretty legitimate. Is that kind of weight difference typical? Thanks in advance!

 

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your talking about .31g. 31 hundreth's of a gram would not concern me too much on a coin minted in 1864, the tolerance levels just are not what they are today. That amount might even be alot from the rim wear on top of the reverse unless the picture is bad, just saying the coin could have been a little light from the mint then a tiny bit of wear adds to that lightness.

 

Actually, IMO that's quite a bit. But you're still okay I believe.

Breen reports that specimens should be 96±4 grains, or 6.221±0.259 grams ≈ (5.962 - 6.48) Your specimen is 7/10ths of a percent off from tolerance.

Walter Breen's Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins, pg.239, Walter Breen, (c)1988

* Nice specimen by the way. 'WE' is quite intact!

 

I think deviation is too high. Try with another scale,it should be on 100% horizontal position during weighing.

 

Doug - that's why I thought it was quite a bit... what do you think about what Breen reported as to the variances being so far apart?

 

Something about the obverse looks fake. Just doesn't look right to me.

 

Why would anyone fake a large motto 1864?

 

Excellent question. I guess it was a test to see if they could pass off something small before they did something big? Assuming it is fake.

 

LOL... The South wanted to bankrupt the North by flooding its economy with billions of dollars in fake French bronze!!

 

In all seriousness, here's a side by side comparison with one from my cabinet. The first is the Umo's. At initial glance, the only difference I see is the height of Umo's '4' in 1864. But that said, it also looks like the camera was shaky too. Breen mentions nothing about the 1864 having a high '4', only a repunched '64' (Breen-2374).

 

Can you resubmit with a sharper image that's a close-up of the date?

 

Per 2011 Red Book...

 

Absolutely true Doug, it also makes wonder if the counterfeiters know that we've got their number, why wouldn't they go for the unexpected like your saying. Its hard to tell how many fakes people have in their collections now...

 

See below posted overlaid images in my next post. The '4' is more (but not equally) congruent to the OP's specimen:

 

Hi all, thanks for the feedback. Sorry about my late post; I'm having trouble with my scanner. I would be a bit surprised if this thing were fake, as it looks pretty darn good in person. But I've certainly been fooled before! The weight is the most damning bit of evidence. The scale I used is really precise (it belongs to the biomed research center). Here are some better pics. Please let me know if I could provide anything else. By the way, it's rotated about 8 degrees from obverse to reverse (not as dramatic as the scanned pics below).

 

Dang that is a big 4 in the date.

 

Here is an animated gif that I assembled with a known specimen and the OP's specimen for comparison purposes:

 

CheetahCats, that's a beautiful animation. I notice that the dates are in a different position. Is the consensus then that this coin is fake? It still seems odd that someone would go through all this effort for a two cent piece. Couldn't this coin just be an outlier?! Please?