Silver Tram of Levon I

Mkm5, I wouldn't be happy with a coin like that , & would get it back to them ASAP. Tell them you want a coin equal to the one they pictured of a refund. Calling this coin Ex.F would be a stretch, & further more there appears to be a a punch mark or chop mark on the left lion on the reverse !

 

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I contacted them and we discussed options on return for exchange or refund. They were polite but not very helpful.

I then emailed customer service and suggested a partial refund so I don't have to go through returning the coin and waiting weeks for a refund.

Their reply:

"Thank you for contacting APMEX. We do apologize that your were dissatisfied with your order. Since this is a 1000 year old coin, we would have to have you return it to us. We will not be able to credit your account.

We hope this helps with your inquiry. Please feel free to reply to this email with any other questions or concerns."

APMEX Customer Service Team

 

In my humble (...well, on a good day) opinion, that's easily the worst flan I've ever seen for one of those. Normally, the flan is the least of your worries; as other folks have said here, it runs more to discrete weakness of strike. ...And along those lines, the overwhelming majority of them have a Lot more legend than that one. ...By the same token, very few of them show up with significant wear. On that front, yours is solid, but hardly exceptional. I'd seriously consider sending it back, especially if it was priced accordingly.
(Edit: ) Oh, nnnNo, the culprit was APMEX! They're the ones with the occasional banner ads right here ...Right? Looked at 'em once; for medievals, it was USebay deja vu all over again. Decent to impressive material, all overpriced. Like, by a Lot. Should've posted some sort of public service announcement about them. Sorry I didn't.

 

This is the picture in their ad:

 

...Thanks, @Mkm5, for nudging me back to your original post about this.
Here's the deal. They're already advertising these in quantity, so they just slapped up a pic of one of their better examples, and gave you one from the bottom of the pile. ...Right, inflated grading being integral to the pathology. Very, very bad form. Why people like this have no business dealing with ancients or medievals. A little like hiring a sociopath as a metro bus driver. Not a good match.
Good news is that at $65, it still wasn't worse than a steep retail. If I were you, I'd be thinking in terms of going ahead and looking for a better one, from someone more reliable. They're available lots of places; even from the occasional dealer on USebay. I could recommend Steve Album as an American dealer --a published, international authority on Islamic coins who does a fair amount of Armenian along the peripheries.

 

Good information, thank you.

I must say I'm disappointed in their response, but I guess I learned a lesson.

 

Sadly, it's the kind we all get to learn. Other people have put that more eloquently here, but it's kind of written into the course description.
...If you wanted to go further afield, like Europe, I could recommend MA Coins and French or UKebay. ...Wait, VCoins is the elephant in the room. They preponderate to established dealers.

 

Yes, this was my first venture into ancient coins. I ordered from them because I thought it would be a safe bet to get a decent genuine coin from an established company.

 

There have been whole threads written on this forum, some just lately, on how to navigate the market. It's one of those artsy sciences in and of itself. But it's relatively easy, still, to separate the reliable dealers --both in terms of knowledge and ethics-- from the ones who aren't so much.
...Much more impressionistically, just since I can't shut up, if a someone comes across as a used car salesman, chances are that's the line of work where they belong ...and /or came from.