Help requested from the Commemorative Folks out there- 1921 Pilgrim…

The relief on these is really high. Wikipedia and Numista both say it's 2.15mm, same as a Kennedy half, but those entries might have been written by someone who assumed all modern half dollar designs have the same thickness. (Really, they should, and they might.)

If that figure is true, and if the fake is copper-coated silver, it should be around 10% thicker, so... 2.375mm? Or maybe they made the dished parts shallower so the rim would be closer to the right thickness, but I don't give them that much credit.

Unfortunately, mine isn't where I thought it was, so it'll be a while before I can get to it. (First order of business will be making sure MINE isn't one of the same fakes!)

 

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I'm just saying it might be obvious. I agree if it was copper clad it would be about 10% thicker, but they probably don't waste good copper on these either...

 

I have some C/F Pilgrims but they don't look like this one. I'll see if I can find one to image but don't hold your breath. The one Jack posted would probably fool lots of people, My fake are brite silver gems - too good to be true.

 

Measures 2.21.

 

I don't think that's enough over-thickness to diagnose a fake by itself. I'm guessing that a specific-gravity test would be similarly inconclusive. I'll be interested to see the results if you get an X-ray scan on it.

 

Back from my local coin shop where it scanned 77% silver...

 

The people who've actually been trained on the ray-gun would know better than I do, but I'm pretty sure that a plated layer of a higher-atomic-weight and denser metal like silver would partially shield the underlying base metal, especially if the the plating is fairly thick. So if you've got a layer of 100% silver over a copper core, it might well read as some intermediate percentage of silver. Did they say what the other 23% read as?

 

Considering it's supposed to be 90%, seems like the reading must be from plating, although more expensive Chinese fakes claim to be silver. I recall seeing "silver" Morgans on that website for $80 or something (not that I'd trust them claiming a fake coin is silver).

 

The "silver" dollar "PCGS" slabbed things had no silver in them...

 

OK, you have seen them here 1st...

The "PCGS" 1920 Pilgrim; reverse is significantly rotated on my example and the same attribution points/ "tells" apply from the 1921. It appears they just removed the date...



Label is for a correct active cert:

 

Current Coin Week article: https://coinweek.com/counterfeit-1920-pcgs-and-raw-1921-pilgrim-half-dollars/