I'm trying to determine if this 1925 Stone Mountain half dollar is real and if so, what it's approximate grade might be. It seems to be in really good condition for a 100 year old coin, but I have read that there have been counterfeits.
My scale doesn't show decimal fractions for grams, but it bounces between 12 and 13 so I assume it's right at 12.5 grams.
With a mintage of 1.3 million +, the Stone Mountain commemorative half dollar is one of the more common early (1892 - 1954) commemorative coins. Funds for the sale of these coins were used in the first attempt to carve a monument into the side of Stone Mountain in Georgia. It was a failure. Gutzon Borglum designed this coin and also tried to execute the carving. He messed up and didn’t get the projection right to line up the work on the mountain face. Ultimately he left the work partially completed. There was a warrant for his arrest in Georgia for a short while. He moved on to Mount Rushmore which came out much better. The Stone Mountain project sat partially finished for many years. Ultimately it was picked up again and completed circa 1970. This time the artists used super hot steam instead of hammer and chisels. These coins are common although are some exceptions. They are pieces that had state abbreviations punch into them (e.g. “TX” or “KY”) with a number. It was one more idea to sell more coins. Your coin appears grade AU with some light cleaning. It would retail for around $50.
Someone made a post here about how they dumped large numbers of them in some of the streams in the area...they had some they claimed came from a stream.
I got a more precise scale now. It shows 12.53 grams. Is that within the acceptable legitimate tolerance for a 100 year old coin?
At 12.53g, it's .03g heavy. It looks real to me. I'm not seeing any issue, outside of the terminal toning setting in. It's a nice design, I always liked these. Hard to grade through all that toning cover, especially off pictures. At the lowest, it's AU-ish, I'm in agreement with @longshot, there. And having an Arabian stallion and English mare in my breeding, I know something about long-shots, lol.
here's info about your question ==> Counterfeit Detection: 1925 Stone Mountain Half Dollar | NGC (ngccoin.com) also search on CT .. there's probably many threads about it. There's other counterfeits too the above is just one such identified one. But yours looks good to me although I'm no expert at it. Don't know if anyone asked where you got it from, if it was a legitimate online seller, how much you paid for it (sometimes a red flag), etc.