Hi, newbie here. My mother has had this coin for a long time but no idea where she got it. When I did some google searching on the subject it came up that these coins are often fake so I wanted to get some opinions on this one. I read that you can tell a fake if it's magnetic, so I tried this coin and it is not magnetic. Is that enough to know for certain? Also - I'm assuming that it's probably not worth much given the condition it's in. Am I correct? And last question, I guess, is what should I do with it? My mom wants to clean the green stuff off of it, but I read on here that you aren't supposed to clean coins.
You could weigh it , though I have no idea what these should weigh . Also does it ring like a silver coin when dropped .
unfortunately I don't have a scale. But I did that drop test and it has a higher tone than the non-silver coins I compared it with. In case you can't tell I've never done any of this stuff before, but I'm having tons of fun learning about coins!
Your coin could be fake , as it appears the details that are left are pretty mushy , the dentrils or teeth around the rim don't look to well formed either . It could be from the gunk on the coin or just a bad copy . Also I know nothing about French trade dollars so wait till someone more faqmiliar with them chimes in . Good luck with your collecting .
Sorry to say but it is a fake. There are several raised lumps of metal on the surface of your coin that are characteristic of a cast counterfeit. That in addition to the mushy details, and malformed denticles convince me your coin is a fake.
Ah, that's disappointing to hear, but I sort of expected it anyway. Oh well. Thanks for taking a look at it.
