I just picked up this 1927 20 Lira coin of Victor Emanuel III. It looks nice to me, but weighs only 14.8 g instead of the 15 g listed in the Std Catalog. Is this within tolerance limits, or have I got a fake? 35 mm diameter, non-magnetic.
I would be concerned about it. To me, there doesn't seem to be enough detail in the obverse or reverse. Based on book value it has a high enough value that it would be a target of counterfeiters.
That's also one of my questions. With 3,518,000 minted, why is the book value so high? Did a lot of them get melted down?
Yours looks pretty good to me, the untrained eye. If it's a fake they did some very good work. It's not sloppy as most fakes are. If you didn't pay a lot of money, you answered your own question. Have to find out if it is silver or not. Sure a counterfeiter could still use silver but that's one step that you can cross off if it is the right metal. I don't see any info about them being melted. Compare your coin to this one:
Someplace there's a book or an article that will have the tolerance information you seek. But I grant you, finding such information is often difficult. But keep searching, it's out there somewhere. As for this - A 0.2 gm difference may well be within specified tolerance for that coin. I say that for two reasons. One it's a fairly modern coin and modern coins typically have higher tolerance ranges, often much higher, than older coins do. For example, the tolerance range for Spanish 8 reales, and the Spanish were among the most strict there were when it came to tolerances, was 27.2638 gm to 26.8646 gm. That's a tolerance range of 0.3992 gm. So just by doing a rough comparison, 0.2 gm could easily be within tolerance for a modern coin. But, you'll need the book or article to confirm it.
Thanks all for your comments. I just saw another one on ebay weighing 14.9 g, so I'll just assume Mussolini may have made the trains run on time, but he didn't control coin weights so carefully.
It's important to understand what carefully controlling coin weight means. Ya see, no matter what the specified weight for any coin is/was, it's just about impossible to get it exactly right every time. And that's why they have and always have had tolerance ranges. Planchets can be a little bit heavy or a little bit light - and they are still considered to be the specified weight. Point being of course, assuming 14.8, or 14.9, is within tolerance - he DID control coin weights carefully. Even with all the advanced technology we have available today in 2020 we still have a considerable tolerance range for our coins. And that range is higher today than it ever was.
