Hello! And thanks in advance for any info given. I bought the following 3 coins in Indonesia in 1997 after doing a conservation expedition and would like to know some more about them and what they might be worth (hard times...). I've got higher res scans if that'd help. I don't have access to scales but the (approx) diameters of the coins are as follows: American trade dollar: 39mm Japanese trade dollar:38mm Japanese trade yen: 37mm That's all I can think of that might be of use to you.
Alas! Fair enough though. Can I verify this by weighing them? Or are there some images of prime examples I can compare them to? How can you/I tell? Many thanks!
American Trade dollar: http://www.mendosus.com/jpg/my-1877s-trade-dollar-huge.jpg Japanese dollar: http://www.lioncoins.com/jpegs/Trade$M8.jpg Japanese yen: http://www.charm.ru/images/coins/misc/1335st.jpg Your coins simply have a cast look about them, especially the Japanese dollar, and they all have the same sort of patina.
OK, it seems to be unanimous, they're all fakes. Well, I paid almost nothing for them and the question of their value was nothing to do with my buying them in the first place. So, as copies, they're worth, nothing?
Essentially. Remember, when buying old coins that seem "too good to be true," they usually are. But stick around! There's more, and better, genuine coins out there!
US trade dollars weigh 27.22g and their diameter is 38.1mm. Meiji 8 (1875) trade dollars also weigh 27.22g, but their diameter is 38.58mm. Meiji 7 (1874) silver yen weigh 26.96g and their diameter is 38.6mm. I strongly suspect that all of your coins weigh ~22g, the typical weight of Chinese counterfeits, which have a silver content of 0.0000%.
