I recently bought at auction a very nice gold Cook Islands 1976FM 100 Dollars. NGC graded it “MS68” but this is a (M) matte strike with original Mintage of 50. It is not designated as such and was bought at bullion. The problem is that the TPGs will on some occasion identify it correctly, other times call it “matte”, other times as “matte proof” and other times like with the OP coin do not identify at all. The other uncirculated type is (U) or prooflike unc which was minted in the thousands and is clearly different (I will post this type in post to follow)
The prooflike type like this was also issued nearly entirely in carboard/plastic encapsulated form, but the matte were possibly tossed in a bag and were not protected - so the only ones I have seen for sale previously are somewhat mauled
I could not find pictures of a satisfactory (U) prooflike 1976FM Cook Islands $100 coin so show a prooflike 1975 Barbados:
T, have you seen many of these before? There is a seller on ebay that has handling marks and I think may have gotten a "details" grade on sale for over $2300 USD! That is a bit imaginative and about 4x what I paid....
I haven't seen any Cook Islands gold for sale before, no, though I tend to look more for the circulating stuff. I've seen a few Solomon Islands gold $100 coins for sale over the years though. Seems odd to try and overcharge on stuff like this - it's pretty niche and difficult to sell I would have thought.
To clarify, the major TPGs are not always consistent on grading these mid-70s matte coins. The very same coins have been called [ordinary] uncirculated, matte uncirculated, and matte proof. In particular these are Franklin Mint issues to which I refer. To subtend (sorry for the math reference) this point, and a gripe of mine is that they have trouble with grading and/or designating mattes in general as well and with earlier issues such as the matte proofs of Great Britain and those struck and the Royal Mint in the 1902-1970 period. I say this because I would suggest the buyer beware of slabbed pieces as there have been rare mattes of years such as 1927, 1937, 1950, 1951 and 1953 - the grading is entirely uneven and some coins graded "66" may be no better or even worse than some graded "63".
