1879-G 10 Mark gold (what’s going on here?)

Looks real. Perhaps ex-jewelry. The edge marks are ornamental, as made.

Let me sniff up some data for you. But in the meantime, vis-a-vis your answer about its premium over the gold bullion value (i.e., spot/melt), the answer is, "probably not much". A lot of these late-19th century European and Latin Monetary Union gold issues trade at a pretty modest premium over their spot value, particularly if they've been mounted in jewelry.

Then again, it could have received those rim marks in circulation. It doesn't have the grossly overpolished look of some ex-jewelry gold coins, thankfully.

(Edit to clarify: I was not talking about those ornamental incuse marks on the edge, but rather some irregularities along the rim I initially noticed. But never mind- on second glance, I think those are normal and within the range of acceptability. Perhaps this is not an ex-jewelry coin after all.)

Also, being from the German state of Baden rather than, say, Prussia or France or Switzerland or whatever, maybe it's a tad scarcer. I don't know yet.

I will say that I like this sort of European gold because it offers a bit of history alongside the bullion value.

Here's a good article about that.

Now, a-Googling I shall go, to look your coin up...

 

Now, a word about how to look up stuff like this.

I entered the keyphrase "Baden 10 marks 1879-G Numista" (without quotation marks) in my Google search bar, and came up with the page for it on the first hit.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces39576.html

Altering the keyphrase only slightly to "Baden 10 marks 1879-G NGC" (without quotation marks), I came up with the NGC World Coin Priceguide listing for it. The prices in the NGC database are based on the KM (Krause-Mishler) Standard Catalog.

https://www.ngccoin.com/price-guide...km-264-1876-88-1888-cuid-1203350-duid-1338374

 

Indeed! Only 98,000. That's pretty good news.

 

Sometimes you have to play with your keywords a bit to get the right search results. Oftentimes you'll end up with something close, but not quite right. But if you put country/denomination/date (or as much as you know) into the search bar, along with "Numista" or "NGC", you'll often get pretty close.

Or if you don't know the country or denomination, you can put part of the legends in there.

Case in point: this Netherlands jeton I got last year. When I first got it, I only had a few clues about it.

Netherlands: copper jeton; 80 Years War, beheading scene, 1596, Dordrecht mint


But by taking the Latin legend off one side, SIMVLATA PAX EXITIVM PARIT, and searching that in Google, one comes up with its Numista page as the sixth result (note that this is without even putting "Numista" in the search phrase).

This is a rather esoteric piece that only just happened to have a Numista page at all- a lot of stuff like this won't.

Now if you do the same search, my own writeups and forum postings about it will be the top search results in Google.

 

The Baden 10-mark here looks like it has AU details to my eyes. NGC/Krause currently says $350.00 in XF and $800.00 in UNC, so it would fall between that range.

I'd estimate in the range of that XF price to be more conservative and realistic.

Upon second look at the photos in the OP, what I initially took to be slight marks along the rim (not the edge ornamentation) are probably within the realm of acceptability, and this might not be an ex-jewelry coin after all.

 

By all means, do, but you don't even need to do that. I access them from the Google search bar, using the method mentioned.

 

So this particular coin should be worth a bit more than the bullion/spot price.

Catalog value is $350.00 in XF, as mentioned. The same NGC page provides the spot/melt value:

SPECIFICATIONS
Composition: Gold

Fineness: 0.9000

Weight: 3.9820g

AGW: 0.1152oz

Melt Value: $205.42 (12/12/2022)​

So this is more than just a piece of bullion. Sure, you can tuck it away as a piece of bullion, for "stacking" purposes, but you've also got that optionality of some numismatic value, too, which is what that Antique Sage blogger was getting at in the article I linked earlier. Bullion value plus numismatic/historical desirability. Icing on the cake, so to speak.

 

I hope so. Welcome to the wonderful world of World coins!

Over on Collectors Universe, years ago, we took to calling ourselves "The Dark Side".

That little nickname branched out, until we classified ourselves by category:

Dark Side= World Coins
Lite Side= US Coins
Grey Side= Canadian Coins
Far Side= Exonumia (tokens, medals, etc.)
​

 

If there are a lot more World coins in your mother's stash, I would recommend picking up the multivolume Krause Standard Catalog of World Coins. In printed format, these are big thick paperback books, like the telephone book for a big city (remember those?) You can find them at most major bookstores that have a collectibles section. Each volume of the catalog covers a century of the world's coinage.

The printed catalogs can be a little pricey, though.

A cheaper alternative is something like this. That's just one eBay listing I stumbled across. I have no connection to the seller and don't know if it's even the best deal out there (you can shop around). But it seems pretty reasonable. You get all five centuries worth of catalogs in digital PDF format for $9.99. They're not the latest editions, but close enough. (Again, shop around).

Also, you can get copies of the paper catalogs that are a couple of years old for much less than the new ones would cost. And the coin value pricing doesn't change that much from year to year, so a Krause catalog that's <5 years old is still useful. The physical paper catalogs are nice because they have a lot of useful charts and stuff in the introductory sections, which you don't get in the online databases like NGC.

But you can get by just fine with the Google searching method I mentioned above, without spending a cent, merely by searching for listings on the Numista and NGC online databases. (I like Numista for overall information and NGC as a priceguide.)