I am aware of the existence of plated coins known as fourees. I have a couple in my collection. I understand some were made by official Roman mints in times of civil stress. What has me somewhat perplexed is how to properly price such a coin. I am looking at a coin dealer's denarius of Augustus, RIC 42 A. We are somewhat in disagreement if it is a fouree but it looks to me that small pieces of silver have flaked off, especially on the rim. Otherwise it appear to be a fairly decent looking coin, probably minted about 19BC, some ten years or so after the end of the civil wars, so not a time of great financial stress. Because it does look attractive I am willing to purchase it as a fouree but have no idea how to price a fouree. I am assuming they go for less but by what percentage? If the coin were priced at $250 as a genuine piece of solid silver, what would be a fair offer as a fouree? Thanks.
I'm not so certain you can say that because a coin is a fouree it is essentially always cheaper than a solid silver coin. I do not collect fouree's but I can see a scenario whereby some fouree's are as scarce (and desireable) as the solid coin, or because the solid coin is so scarce the fouree is priced accordingly. Augustus RIC 42a is rather scarce AND desireable. The coin represented on Wildwinds sold at Triton V Sale, 16 Jan 2002, lot 1859, for $1000. A pretty nice pricetag in 2002 dollars.
This is just my opinion: Just being identified as a fourree reduces the value of a coin to no more than 1/4 of what it would be solid. From there, it does down according to how ugly the coin is from peeling of the plating. If all the core exposure is restricted to areas that look decent, the amount of further price drop is less than if there is random peeling destroying important parts of the coin. It also matters if the area exposed under the missing silver has detail or if it is rough and corroded. Finally a fourre that is of good style closely matching the official is worth more than an amateurish one. Every coin is an individual case. 25% hard to tell it is fourree: 15% not terrible >5% space filler Some people are paying much too much for these now IMHO. There was a time many dealers would not sell them at all but now we have dealers who act like it makes no difference or even that someone might pay a premium. Very, very few plated coins are close enough to official style that we suspect that they could possibly be in any way tied to the real mint or moonlighting activities of mint workers. Most, by far, are just plain wrong in style. The more you know about an issue, usually you see the bad style more clearly. Also just my opinion: There are some periods with many more reasonable quality fourrees than others and a few coins that seem to only come in fourree. These may be more likely to be official to some degree but proving that will be very hard.
