Authenticity of numismatic gold coins

I came across few sites, claiming to release gold coins of rare numismatic value from a mint called Mayers mint, claimed to be one of the oldest private mints in Germany. They have released few gold/silver coins of Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II and claim to have proper permissions. Does the mint name Mayers mint ring some bell to anyone? How to check the authenticity of such coins?Do they really have numismatic value?? I'm pretty much new to numismatics and this forum. Please guide me.

Thanks,
Neo

 

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Wait, you mentioned PRIVATE mints. How can private mints mint "OFFICIAL COINS"?

 

to Cointalk Neo.

The pretend "coins" issued by private mints are considered exonumia, which is the branch of numismatics that deals with a diverse myriad of non-monetary things, such as wooden nickles, elongated cents, New Orleans Mardi Gras tokens, medals, and bullion in its multiple forms (rounds, bars, etc.)

Most rounds (the generally accepted name for coin-like bullion) are worth the melt value of the metal they contain, although some are collectible in other categories. For instance, the Franklin Mint has issued various types of gold, silver and even plated objects related to automobiles, and Shell Oil Company once issued tokens with various cars depicted on them. Car collectors might like to have all of those, but their collectability comes from the subject, not the manner of rendition.

Religious figures are popular subjects for such pieces, as they appeal to many people who are not coin collectors.

The legal tender bullion coins issued by government mints - the US Silver, Gold and Platinum Eagles; the British Britannia; South African Krugerands; Liberian "commemoratives"; and on and on and on and on - are technically coins, but since they don't circulate and they almost always contain more than their nominal face value in bullion, many of us consider them a form of exonumia, and have no place for them in our collections.

In other words, the pieces you refer to do have value, but it's not really numismatic value.

The Mayers Mint claims to be over 130 years old on its >>website<<, the first of 232,000 Google hits on "Mayers Mint Germany".

 

Thanks for the valuable info, satootoko. I too saw their website. But there I saw some of these coin are released in association with a company called Gold Quest. A weird thing about this company is that many links say the business model is ponzi of pyramid kind of scam. The point here is how to check whether a mint is dependible??. Is there any site providing a list of registered mints which are authentic??

 

No.

There may be sites claiming to do that, but if so, they just express someone's opinion, and I guarantee that there is no website on the entire world wide web that reliably lists those whose opinions are to be trusted.