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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;teh_admiral, post: 3257852, member: 99788&quot;][USER=15019]@Numismat[/USER] [USER=75732]@USCoinCollector42[/USER] Sorry, but you&#039;re wrong: a coin is ONLY worth melt + emotional value. Period. There&#039;s no fixed price on &quot;owning a piece of history.&quot; (Mine is melt + 1 USD/year before present. Period. Just because it&#039;s shiny and uncirculated doesn&#039;t mean much to me. That&#039;s like buying a brand new car above MSRP and never driving it hoping it&#039;s a 1 out of 10 Ferrari in value. And in the case of coins, it mostly never is a 1 out of 10 as most were minted in the millions...) And since none of us know the %/karat unless we were there watching it poured and minted, no one genuinely knows with CERTAINTY that what they have in hand is as stated. The most apt example is shipwrecked silver and gold. We pay more than spot for a piece that&#039;s been cleaned off the ocean floor, because cleaning it &quot;adds to the history&quot; or whatever. Having a lump of calcified silver just doesn&#039;t do it for most people, coin or bullion collectors alike. Another example is a tarnished silver coin; the tarnish shows its history. Therefore, having a coin scratch tested ADDS to the history of the coin without DIMINISHING its actual content by any MEANINGFUL measure. It&#039;s only IN YOUR HEAD that the coin is &quot;damaged.&quot; In ACTUALITY, any CIRCULATED coin is already &quot;damaged,&quot; and like I said earlier I&#039;ll bet my 8 escudo that none of you can tell where a coin has been scratch-tested unless it&#039;s MINT and obviously flawless before testing. You think coin-people are the only pros that know how to handle metals and minerals? And not only that, whether you agree or disagree doesn&#039;t so much matter when numismatics are so concerned about fakes they&#039;re writing the US Mint about it. But if you read my links you would&#039;ve known other coin lovers don&#039;t share your sentiment. KNOWING is ALWAYS better than GUESSING when it comes to metals and minerals.</p><p><br /></p><p>To put it another way: you are all saying a house is worth the asking price even without having all the requisite inspections. To quote Batman, &quot;Criminals thrive on society&#039;s &#039;understanding&#039;.&quot; That kind of attitude is how lemon laws get passed and houses with broken sewer pipes get sold. And to hit closer to home, that&#039;s how professional criminals are able to mass-produce fakes and introduce them to the system: because it&#039;s profitable because people whose livelihoods depend on passing good goods pass bad goods sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly.</p><p><br /></p><p>When [USER=15199]@desertgem[/USER] can find a link to (IMHO not-so-good, the sword lacking detail is too obvious) fakes in less than __ time, then how much time will it take to find fakes that are so good they fool XRF hand-helds? </p><p><br /></p><p>If you want to own a piece of history without knowing with scientific certainty that it is what it is, well in all honesty that&#039;s life in a nutshell. But some things CAN be known with certainty, and IMHO it&#039;s foolish to NOT know when you CAN know...</p><p><br /></p><p>And again, this is the wrong thread for people to be voicing their opinions of scratch-testing since I&#039;m here looking for help regarding a piece that has been tested at less than 22k gold......[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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