Buying a high value raw coin on eBay? (1943 Ireland Florin)

It looks genuine to me. I don't see any distorted or missing design or anything else suspect. I hope it works out well for you.

 

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The 3 looks a bit off from the ones I see on PCGS since the bottom loop is bigger, but then looking at the ones that sold on HA, one of them had a 3 that looked like that.

Who knows, we'll see what PCGS says I guess. If there's a even a 20% chance it's real it's worth temporarily tying up the money and losing $200 to PCGS to me.

 

Do you know how many obverse dies were made for 1943?

 

The only thing I know is that the London Mint (early Irish coins were made in London even after independence) delivered one bag of 1000 of these coins to Ireland but due to the war and increased silver price they didn't want them and they were intended to be destroyed but inadvertently some were released into circulation and about 35 are thought to exist.

Based on that it seems weird there are a bunch of obverse dies, but looking at the 4 sales on Heritage Auctions, one of the 3's looks (to me at least) different from the other examples.

The population report for PCGS is 9, NCG is 6, ANACS is 1 and ICG shows 0 so if the estimate of 35 is correct about half are presumed to be raw. Then again I have no idea how they came up with the 35 number.