Is junk gold a thing like junk silver?

One question for you foreign gold coin buyers. I been buying Pre-33 US gold for thirty years. I like it. I know it. I trust my judgment on it….. I have turned away foreign gold purchase at spot before because somewhere along in my early numismatic career, somebody told me that foreign gold was much more difficult to sell than US gold….. Is that the case?

 

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There's some US gold that's hard to sell such as the Grant Wood gold medallions. US gold Eagles (and Buffalos) are very desirable, then you drop a step to Maple Leafs, Krugerrands and Philharmonics. So if you are considering Maple Leafs and Krugerrands, they are very easy to sell as foreign gold.
Check what the big gold dealers will pay on their buy sites and you'll figure out what gold is most "market friendly."

 

I thinned out my bullion gold hoard recently. What did I keep? Mostly 19th century 10 and 20 coronas. Also a few Hungarian - same weight. I figure not even the Chinese would counterfeit them, so any competent dealer would accept them as real with no problem. Of course I would have to sell at a discount to bullion. And I admit I paid a whopping 15% premium over bullion when I bought them - $4 each for the 10's, $8 for the 20's. [Yeh, that was a while back, and I didn't have a license to buy bullion.]
During the Hunt brothers silver debacle in 1979, for no good reason I could figure, gold went along for the ride. I was selling $20's to a major dealer. One day I go in and he says two of that last batch were counterfeit. I say I will buy them back. He says, too late, they are already in the melting pot. They were full weight, full fineness Lebanese fakes. The refiner didn't care if they were fake. So sometimes counterfeit is not a problem!
Back around 2010, I was trying to sell a 2 escudo of the Central American Republic. A nice one would have been in the neighborhood of $1000, but this was removed from jewelry. Couldn't get $300 for it. Two years later, gold is up to about $1700/oz, sold for $325 - bullion value. I guess that qualifies as "junk gold".

 

BARRON'S has a listing for 6 popular 1-oz gold coins in their MarketData Section each week. Premiums in dollar amount and %.

 

Subject: Junk Gold. Slightly off-topic here but since I recently purchased an inexpensive Radiation detector(Maybe a good a time as any in the last 50 years)!
I am reminded of a news article I read many, many years ago about folks who were getting rashes when wearing a gold watch or jewelry. It turned out that it was radioactive! 'Somehow' radioactive gold was turning up in gold by unscrupulous means!

 

"Junk" gold won't make your fingers dirty or smelly like junk silver (especially war nickels!).

 

I would guess it'd be a little harder to sell the fake today just in terms of proving its actually gold with the rise in off metal/filled centers. Yea technically it doesnt matter in terms of melt value if the gold is there, but it does also limit where and how you can sell it.

 

Absolutely not the case ! Just as easy to
sell AGE,S and graded gold as it is to sell
let’s say Mexican gold and you will get
a premium for that as the production
levels are allot less.