Hey I want to here some stories about the best coin you could have gotten for a steal but didn't. I had been going to a local pawn shop for peace dollars. The owner was selling his coins for 10% above melt. When I went in he said he didn't have any peace dollars but he had some morgans so I checked those out. He had a 1895 (don't know the mint) and a 1879 O. I didn't know anything about morgans at that time since I was just looking for peace dollars so I ended up buying the 1879 just because it was older.
i bet you learned your lesson on that one huh?? i used to set up at a flea market with my father and one day a new guy showed up and and i saw he was selling silver quarters below melt but some other guy bought them all. then that same guy asked about his silver dimes, he said a buck a piece, which was far more below melt then he sold the quarters but the guy already spent all of his money. so my father and i bought the several hundred dimes then bought all of his silver dollars for 20 each (spot was about $38 at this time) bought all of those and older proof sets and silver bars. after all of the buying is done and im going through everything i end up coming across a fine 1895 O morgan. it is funny how sometimes you just stumble across stuff. another time we were at our favorite dealers shop and he said "i just bought these, nobody has seen them. $200 for them all". there was capped barber and seated so we bought it, after we got home realized we had an 1844 O double die seated half dollar. it was a very fine and ended up selling on ebay for two grand. sorry i got off subject but i saw that 1895 you mentioned and the keys typed themselves
Ouch, so you didn't go back to the pawn shop and try your luck again? Maybe that 1895 morgan is still there?
Beware of fakes especially at pawn shops & flea markets. If you don't know how to detect fakes then stay away from all offers that seem to good to be true.
I don't know how to detect for fakes. I do know how to tell if it is silver and it definitely was silver. Although it still very well could have been fake.
I guess off the top of my head there was a group of Syracuse mint Byzantine coins once on Ebay. I wasn't much into Byzantine yet, and it was about 70 coins. All of them around VF, a few worst but many even better. I went up to around $250 and thought this was way to rich for my blood and they sold for around $400. Today these are $100 coins each if you can find them. At the time, (though I didn't know it), they were already $50 a piece coins. I don't even know if there were any rarities in there, these are just "common" prices.
Everyone (including pawn shop owners and flea market enthusiasts) know enough to check the Morgan date & mint mark.
Just to be clear, all the dollars in my two photos are fake. The fake dollars in the type set are mounted in a wooden box purchased for $1. The two peace dollars have repeating depressions in front of Liberty's chin. Contact marks can never happen in exactly the same position so the two coins are from the same bad (fake) die. P.S. Only the box cost $1. The fake coins were collected over the years.
You mean by the appearance, lot of fakes are silver plated? Collect89, Can't you also tell its fake by lack of detail/sharpness in the strike when it comes to the hair and the lettering?
I see the pair of 3 dots in the field before her mouth. What is that? Edit: I see you already answered me
Yep. I can tell that the coins depicted are fake. I can have trouble with high quality fakes like everyone else. The two peace dollars depicted are not high quality fakes and are posted only for informational purposes. I actually purchased the two peace dollars in Beijing in the early 1980s. I bought them because they were classic cast pieces showing poor details, incorrect reeding, incorrect weight, incorrect diameter, repeating depressions,....etc. This was at a time when collectors were being fooled by fake seated dollars and commemoratives coming from the same sources. I brought home the peace dollars, and even a fake Washington quarter. I believe these may have been intended to fool the bullion folks and "make their collections more perfect". It is 32 years later and the products coming from that area of the world are much more deceiving today.
