I really don't know much about trade dollars so please excuse my ignorance if anything is obvious.i just received this coin along with a few random coins that were my great uncles. Could anyone tell if it is real? A value perhaps and grade? Any help is appreciated. To me it does look strange and prob cleaned.Also i did weigh it and it was 27.1 grams. my scale only reads tenths so it may be 27.14 but only reads .1
also as a side note i looked at the dress and it looks almost carved...odd i wont be suprised if it turns out fake
It looks fake to me. The folds in the dress look unnatural, and the reverse exhibits signs of being cast rather than struck.
Take it to a local dealer so they can see it up close. They will let you know what you have. At the very least, it does look cleaned and the luster is just not there. The worst that could happens that its fake like the other members expressed.
Looking at the ribbon in Liberty's hand, it looks like it spells "LIBERTYT". At any rate, that bit that comes after the "Y" looks very dubious. I won't go quite so far as to say "If this is real, then I am the Pope"... Not *quite* that far...
You guys are being too nice. This coin is a cast fake, and a crude one at that. Today's Chinese counterfeiters do a much better job.
I think there is a fair chance the coin is good but the dress on the obverse has been crudely tooled to strengthen the fold lines. the coin has also been cleaned. What does the edge look like?
Honestly the color reminds me of a contemporary lead counterfeit. I am pretty sure it's a counterfeit.
Dutchman, a lead coin with the same weight and size? if anything it has to be a silver fake no due to the density of the metals.
Dutchman, a lead coin with the same weight and size? if anything it has to be a silver fake no due to the density of the metals. Read more: http://www.cointalk.com/t191293/#ixzz1WlNRz5ip
There are ways of mixing lead with lighter metals to achieve the right density. At any rate, even if it is not made of lead, it is, unfortunately, fake. The misspelling of LIBERTYT should be a dead giveaway. Also, look at all the "warts" on Liberty's hand and elsewhere in that cropped photo I posted-- telltale signs of casting.
I dont understand why someone who goes through great effort to make a coin look fairly similar would spell liberty wrong...
Maybe it was an unintentional mistake made by someone whose writing system differs from the Roman alphabet, or by an illiterate counterfeiter? (I have a contemporary counterfeit of a French 1/10 ecu that shows Louis XVI as Louis XV, so it does happen). Maybe it was a sort of joke? It seems that the misspelling is hard to detect with the naked eye.
That would make sense if everything was spelt wrong no? Especially if they were illiterate. Im not sure if someone without much education could develope casts and have it be so close just to mispell but im the first to say im wrong ifi am. To me it looks more like the dress carvings....but i am not saying it is correct it does look off for sure.
