A friend of mine got me interested in starting a coin collection a couple of weeks ago, so I'm very new. I bought some silver 1 oz coins from around the world on eBay last week to add to a 1 oz gold eagle my parents gave me awhile ago. I also bid on some 1865 Maximilian 'coins'. It was an impulse bid I soon regretted after doing research and finding out they were nothing more than gold plated 'tokens'. Lesson number one: research first, buy second . In any case, the Maximilian tokens did still have some value (if as nothing else as scrap) as far as I could tell. What came in the mail yesterday though was something different. The Mexican Maximilian coins were instead some sort of knock of a gold American Eagle. The 'coins' are obviously fake in my opinion, but this perks my interest in exactly what they are. I found the story behind the Maximillian tokens somewhat interesting (they had perhaps a dozen different versions and were used as some sort of wedding party favor in different parts of Latin America). The coins are very small (10mm) and weigh in at about a half gram. I received 100 of them and they all look pretty much the same with very low quality detailing. I ordered Maximillian coins that were supposed to be "Mexican", but instead got this American knock off. The obverse side is a bad imitation of the same image on the american gold eagle. There appears to be no date, no denomination, nor any "copy" notation. Whatever it is doesn't react to a magnet. The luster appears very similar to the real 1oz American Gold Eagle I do have. The original eBay add indicated that they were gold plated with a low quality gold core (8-22k) which jived with some of the descriptions I found online. In any case, I'd like to know as much as possible to justify my case for returning them. .
From what I've found by examining a few of these is that they have no actual gold content and are, at best, plated at 40 to 100 mils depth, which is relatively thin compared to the overall weight of it.
How much justification do you need? It wasn't what you ordered, so return them and take the opportunity to cancel the order and get your money back.
If you still can, I would use the fact they are not "maximillian" coins and return them. I concur strongly with Conder, (as usual).
