Hi to all: I am really so naive when it comes to coins . I don't know anything at all but what I read on various internet sites so any info that I may receive from you knowledgable collectors is much appreciated. I inherited a Liberty ten dollar gold piece from a deceased relative . The date is 1898 on the coin. How do I know where it was minted? I could not find evidence of any mint mark even under my loupe. The person that owned this coin was my late aunt and she had a 14kt gold frame around the coin to wear as a pendant. It looks to me as if she hardly wore it and I have had it stored for over 20 years in a safe. Is the coin devalued in any way by having the 14kt frame around it? Also, what would this coin be worth in the current market? Is the gold content 22kt or 24kt? I may want to sell it eventually so I would like to know all the above . Thanks for the help on this.
Welcome to CoinTalk! See the "S" on the coin's reverse, just above TEN and under the eagle's claw? That's the mint mark, indicating the coin was made in San Francisco. When a coin is put into a mount like this, and the fingers get bent down to hold the coin, they usually make indentations in the rim of the coin. That's damage. It also looks like there's more damage around the prong covering the first S in STATES. People also often polish coins that are mounted like this. Your photos of the coin's reverse make it look like it's been polished heavily. Collectors also consider this to be damage. With all those strikes against it, a coin like this usually won't have any value beyond the gold it contains. Right now, that's about $600 or so. That 14K bezel looks fairly large and heavy, so it will contain quite a bit of gold as well. If the bezel adds any value beyond its gold content, you'll need a jewelry expert to help you figure that out. You'll also need to judge for yourself what sentimental value this piece carries. Nobody will pay you any extra for that, but it might give you more reason to keep it.
Welcome! Yes, this coin has been polished, so unless it is a key date, would really only be worth melt value to most people. Still a nice coin and bezel though!
Thanks to both of you that replied to me re: the coin. I have not polished the coin myself but maybe my late aunt did. I really don't know. I have seen that this coin weighs somewhere around 16 grams. I weighed the coin on my jewelry scale and it weighs 26.2 grams so I guess the frame is about 10 grams of 14kt gold. I don't have any sentimental attachment to the coin and would like to list it on Ebay or some other selling medium. By the way, am I right in assuming the gold content of the coin is 90% ---22kt or 24kt gold? I did finally find the "S" mark. You guys have great eyes for sure!! Thanks Jeff and J.Witten for the kind replies. You're the best!
Yes, 90% gold, so closer to 22k. It should bring melt value on ebay, then you lose the ebay fees. Maybe try selling it here for slightly below melt... you will get more money in your pocket since there are no ebay fees.
I concur with the previous two respondents. It's nice as a piece of jewelry. I would leave it in the bezel and let it remain a piece of jewelry, since being mounted like that made it into a bullion item worth the gold value and took away most if not all of its numismatic value. If you took it out of the bezel that would only decrease its jewelry value and do nothing to restore its lost numismatic value (which at this point would be impossible). But it's a "generic" common date that likely would not have traded for too much higher than its gold value anyway, and you've got the jewelry value of the bezel, too. So while it has strikes against it on the numismatic front, at least you have some neat old jewelry with a bit of gold, there.
Hello Lordmarcovan: Yes, I think you are correct and from the recent messages about it's value, it will be sold off probably to a family member that expressed interest in it. I am actually afraid to wear it, never have , so that is why it was locked up for so many years. It is a conversation piece for sure. Have a happy 4th of July.
The reverse looks flash plated, not polished. I'd bust it out, unless that mounting was also precious metal, definitely if cheap pot metal and consider having plating, assuming that it has been plated, carefully un-flash plate it. At VF20, it is about 700 bucks and if the plating comes off revealing much higher grade an overall coin, yet, conserved to get it there, that may be a bargain for somebody. Or, I may be stark raving mad. However, if that bezel is pot metal, I'd remove it so fast (and carefully) it wouldn't be a thought. I've removed plenty finding no or virtually no damage resulting. Even if it were decent metal, maybe silver, don't destroy it removing the coin and stuff in some antique cameo pic of somebody appreciated and/or missed.
Hello O.F. Thanks for your musings on the coin and the bezel. Yes,it is most certainly 14kt gold bezel---it's hallmarked. What is flash plating? You have to understand I am unfamiliar with aspects of coin evaluation. I did have a contact from someone on this site wanting to purchase it but I guess he deleted it as it is not evident any longer. His offer was very low and I could get more from a family member. Still, I may post on Ebay to see what , if any, offers I could get for it as a jewelry item. My aunt would never wear any metal that was not either 14kt or 18kt. Trust me on that. Thanks for your valued opinion. Have a happy 4th of July.
I don't care what color polishing rouge you use on yellow gold, it will not turn chrome looking silver. Likely flash plated with rhodium if this is an old piece and that bezel is 14K. A high end jewelry store can not only remove the flash plating, they'll keep the rhodium! So, I think you have more and better options then selling this as a melt value coin and melt value 14K bezel. Triple, if not 5X those melt values and if nobody jumps on there as estate jewlery as is, consider having it removed and having the flash plating removed from the coin, if I am correct about that. The bezel has more than melt value since it can house other items. I see no evidence the coin has been so masterfully polished chrome shiny without seriously deteriorating the quality of the coin as stricken. This all assumes the coin is legit and not a CF/fake. That, I'm assuming would have been already determined by prior posters who likely have forgotten more about this coin than I'll ever know.
You seem to be jumping to a lot of conclusions from the assumption that the original picture has accurate color balance. If you take a picture of a gold item with an ordinary digital camera, and the gold fills most of the image, the camera will assume the lights are yellow and adjust the image to make the coin look silver. I assumed that was what happened here.
Well without asking the poster about that color seems to have several jumping to far more unreasonable conclusions based on much more unlikely assumptions. Now why would anyone dead smooth (nearly) mirror polish the back side of a piece of jewelry? Then post a picture of it that shows up like silver chrome and not specify it was gold polished so shiny it looks like chrome in the picture?
This is meant in the most general sense, and is in no way directed towards the OP... I learned many years ago to never seriously question why people do things to coins, simply because it doesn't really matter and will drive you nuts. If more people would stop concerning themselves with what may have happened, and instead focus only on what's there, they, and the hobby as a whole, would be the better for it. I'm not surprised, unfortunately, and this is really something that needs to stop, especially being that this is a forum where many new to the hobby come looking for trustworthy advice. Although I realize you don't know who this person was, it would be nice if people started outing the usernames of those who are here to try to take advantage others. That said, I think you've a win-win in selling it to a family member, even if you end up pocketing slightly less in the end.
In the most general sense, it is far more likely that whomever mounted that in no cheap bezel many, many years ago, flash plated the reverse of the coin as opposed to actually polishing it. Now it most likely was cleaned prior, and maybe harshly so, but, the back is plated with rhodium most very likely. This piece of jewelry did not come out of some roadside tourist stop. I cannot see enough from the blurry picture to even remotely suggest if the bezel (or it's wax mold) was ordered from a findings catalog or a one-off carved piece of wax then poured by a goldsmith. There isn't enough detail revealed to remotely determine if the goldsmith was actually "somebody", and that is possible. However, the only logical answer I can think of to my question for the OP ignoring it's color being not yellow, if it is indeed not yellow, is the OP just snapped two pretty indifferent pictures (the OP would certainly take more pains if the intent was to list on ebay) and posted them and that was the extent of due care or notice. It would actually seem more credible if people presenting as though they are going to offer meaningful opinions, to ask such posters to at least attempt uploading in focus pictures taken from a steady device, first. It isn't that hard to do and since this is a comparatively large piece of jewelry having some potential value and not a tiny dime, it is that much easier to adequately photograph. Making any calls on this as shown here would be like handing it to an appraiser and insisting his or her glasses were smeared with crisco prior to inspecting it.
@Candygirl7, can you try this, please? Put the piece on a standard sheet of white paper (8 1/2 x 11). Hold your camera far enough above it so that most of the sheet of paper is in the picture. Take pictures of the front and back with the camera held like that. This is the opposite of the advice we usually give, because it means you're wasting a lot of your camera's resolution with a tiny image of the coin. But what it should do is give you photos with the proper white balance. I'm betting that both sides of the piece will be clearly gold-colored, mostly because I think you would've mentioned in the beginning if they weren't. Or I'd settle for "yes, both sides are gold colored" or "no, the back is silvery".
Since it appears she's gone elsewhere, perhaps you may wish to provide such a demonstration where a gold coin, having many faceted surfaces intersecting on and from various angles reflecting light, can appear patently silver, if not chrome. I can certainly photograph a silver coin and make it appear mostly gold without any post processing, but, you're really missing the keys in her photographs (around the circumference) and it would take huge amounts of fiddling and manipulating for me to photograph that shiny gold coin making it appear chrome, without a single surface reflecting gold or yellow colored light, including the white gold bezel reflecting the patently gold color of the coin's edge. Did you know that "old school*", jewelers often plated even white gold with rhodium? Do you know why? *I hate that term
LOL. The coin is POLISHED. If the mount is 14K gold, it may be white gold in which case it is possible that the reverse was plated to match the color of the mounting.
Notice the color of the bezel while you suggest it 'may be white gold', around on the other side. You're wrong except when you less than expressly agree the reverse has been plated. LOL. Hahaha whatevah.
I'm sorry, but as usual, you're making this much, much, much more difficult than it needs to be. To even suggest to someone new to this that their common, would-be ex-jewelry coin, if plated and removed, could be a bargain, due to condition, is really a bit much. This isn't, as an example, a very rare piece of branch gold, but is something that more often than not (and no disrespect to the OP intended) ends up in the scrap pile, sold to bullion buyers, or to collectors if at the "right" price. Even if it was plated (which I highly doubt), it simply doesn't matter, unless to the individual, and in this case it clearly doesn't. The bezel is, of course, another issue. Even though it may not have come from a "roadside tourist shop", it's not like they, plain or decorative, are uncommon or not sold at countless coin shops/jewelry stores, at least at one time. Sure, there's a chance it may be something special beyond its content, but in all likelihood, chances are also rather slim. As for the OP not returning, perhaps she feels no need to do so. Apparently, she's happy with what has been said, and doesn't seem to be someone interested in continuing on the path to a numismatic education, so why bother? She also may have one of those things many of us once had; you know, a "life".
It seems to me to have been a prime opportunity to demonstrate how 'appearing to fall' for garbage pictures by 'experts', or at least that put themselves out as such, that should know better is simply standard operating procedure here, when simply requesting a level of quality pictures, reasonable to expect from a bright kid, just seldom happens at the cost of the collective's resulting in dubious appearing, or hasty determinations often. Note you took exception to what came afterwards in this very thread, by the hands of whomever you felt should be outed. Human nature, she heeded that and took leave, like many do from here, after not too many interactions. Have you ever removed the flash plated rhodium from gold? You might be surprised what is actually under it and how little damage was done to it in the process. Frankly, there is not enough information posted regarding the front of the coin to even speculate about best case possible for the coin alone. For all anyone knows, whomever made it has topaz and rubies set around it, you can't say it does or doesn't exist that way from that picture, now can you? See the recent nickel thread, the 79D, and then go back and see how that went down originally back while I simply observed the goings on without comment. Over and over and over again. Crappy virtually useless pictures posted, automatic it's nothing response, finito and repeat. 365-24-7 almost without fail. Sometimes it is quite amusing.