Hello All, Here is another small group of error coins I wanted to post on here to see if anyone has any comments on the type of error, rarity, value, whether it's worth it to be graded, etc. As always, any comments are greatly appreciated and any discussion is encouraged. I wanted to try something a little bit different on this lot. I have some world coins that appear to be mismatched date/mint mark combination pieces or mismatched date/design pieces. Not only is that unusual, but these pieces also appear to have some type of error as well. NOTE #1: Error #66 is supposedly a Mexico 8 Reales dated 1806 Mo FT. Under KM#109 in the "Standard Catalog of World Coins 1801-1900", 8th edition, there is no listing for this Date/Mint Mark combination. A similar Listing of Date/Mint Mark combinations is available at https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces18852.html While this mismatch may indicate that this is possibly a counterfeit, there also appears to be some type of lamination problem with this piece. This example also has medal alignment orientation, which is correct for this issue. Weight is ~24.4 grams (correct should be ~27.07 grams [may be light due to lamination detachment]). NOTE #2: Errors #67-68 are supposedly Great Britain gold Sovereigns dated 1979. There are several anomalies to these examples when comparing to a standard 1979 G.B. Sovereign, so I will try to break them up for clarity as follows: A: Note that both of these examples have a marking stamped in the obverse field that says "21 Kt". Per KM#919 in the "Standard Catalog of World Gold Coins", 5th edition, G.B. sovereigns are 0.9170 pure gold (22 Kt). There is a thread on a different site that looks at a sovereign with a "21 K" stamp. That thread discusses how that piece may be a jewelers copy and also states the following: "it is also possible they were 22 K sovereigns locally assay stamped by officials with the official legal 21K stamp because the laws of the country might require that an imported piece, in order to be able to be named and sold as gold in an islamic country must hold 21K and state it or bear that mark. " This thread can be reached at https://www.silverstackers.com/forums/index.php?threads/weird-mintmark-on-sovereign.26184/ B: One of the most unusual anomalies is the fact this these pieces are dated 1979, but they have the head of King George V. Great Britain gold Sovereigns from 1979 should have the head of Queen Elizabeth II. This alone is an extremely abnormal feature and raising a very big red flag. C: In the photograph below, the edges of these examples are shown beside a genuine gold Sovereign. Note that the reeding on the examples is very weak to nearly non-existent when compared to a Sovereign that is known to be genuine. D: As per the above-mentioned photograph of the edges of these examples, you can note that the diameter and thickness actually seems to match or very closely match that of a known genuine sovereign. In addition, the weights of both examples are ~8.0 grams, which is within error of the correct weight. E (Error Part 1): Both examples appear to have rotated reverses of varying degrees. According to https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces12812.html, a 1979 Great Britain gold Sovereign should have medal alignment orientation. According to https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces11463.html, Great Britain gold Sovereigns with the King George V head from 1911-1925 also have medal alignment orientation. Note that there are other issues with an "enhanced portrait / modified effigy" of King George V that were issued by other countries like Australia and South Africa in later years, some of which were issued with coin alignment orientation. Assuming medal alignment orientation would be the correct orientation for these examples, #67 would have a reverse rotated about 5-10 degrees, whereas #68 would have a reverse rotated near 120 degrees. F (Error Part 2): The most obvious and striking error are the clashed die marks on both the obverse and the reverse. You can clearly see the outline King George V on the reverse along with the horse and rider as well as evidence of the horses tail coming out of the back of King George V's head when looking at the obverse. I am no expert in how to create overlays like those at http://www.maddieclashes.com/denominational-overlays/, but I would imagine that details would seem to match up very closely upon creation of an overlay assuming medal alignment orientation. Now to the coins..... ERROR #66 (Obverse) (Reverse) (Edge view at 6:00) (Edge view at 12:00) ERRORS #67-68 (Obverse - #67 on Left, #68 on Right) (Reverse - #67 on Left, #68 on Right) (Edge View - #67 on Left, #68 on Right - Genuine Gold Sovereign in Center) (Obverse of #67) (Reverse of #67) THANK YOU. Tagging: @Seattlite86 NOTE: IF ANYONE ELSE WANTS TO BE TAGGED, LET ME KNOW.
#66 It should be .903 silver I don't like the way it looks at all. Amost plated . What's the word they use over at the ancients forum? looks like a Fouree..
The 8 Reales looks like it's plated and the plating is peeling off. I see and bid on these all the time and have never, ever seen anything like that.As you pointed out, the date and the initials don't match, and not with anything I could find either. BTW, those initials are not the mintmark. They are called the assayer's, or the moneyer's, initials. That's the guy who weighed the silver before the strike and the coin after the strike and "certified" that they were both legit. The mintmark is the large M with the tiny o over it. It stands for Mexico City, which is actually the oldest mint in the Americas, and it's still functioning today. At that time Mexico was a colony of Spain. Many of the old Spanish colonies had enormous silver deposits and Spain set up mints in most of the ones that had the silver. It was cheaper to transport finished silver coins than it was to transport raw silver ore. It looks to me like a genuine 1806 coin was used to make the mold for the obverse, and a genuine 1801 - 1803 coin (It appears FT was the money man for only 3 years) was used to make the mold for the reverse. Why the counterfeiters didn't use matching coins to make their molds, I have no idea. Maybe so they themselves wouldn't be fooled by their own fakes ? Really, this is all supposition on my part. I'm calling it a fake : Cast and Plated. I've been up all night and I'm not going to go any deeper than that right now. I'm about to go to bed. The sovereigns look like fakes also, though I don't know much about those. Later.
#66 seems familiar... I feel like I've seen it before. Looks plated and like the plating is peeling. I'd say fake. #s 67-68 look fake to me, but could just be the damage. In fairness, gold coins are not my wheelhouse. I will say that they're not die clashes. The lettering is in the wrong spot: a common tell that it's been put into a vice and smashed with another coin. A true die clash would have the lettering appearing in the same location if you laid the two sides on top of each other. There should be a D.G. over St George's shoulders, and the head clash on St George should face left, not right. Also, the damage to the edges tells me they were squeezed/pressed.
@paddyman98 @Hookman @Seattlite86 Thank you for your replies. I am pretty certain that all of these pieces are counterfeits. I am surprised the counterfeiters would use assayer initials on #66 that don't match with any from 1806. I am also surprised the counterfeiters of #67-68 would date the coins 1979 and still use the head of King George V. The idea that the plating on #66 is peeling off would seem like the most likely reason the piece looks the way it does. I wouldn't think someone would be trying to fake a lamination issue, but you never know. I'm not even sure if there are Mexico 8 Reales with lamination errors. As for #67-68, I don't understand why someone would want to have pressed them together to imitate die clash marks along with them being stamped "21Kt" and the fact that the obverse bust of King George V is completely wrong with the 1979 date.
Were you testing us? I think I have heard before that counterfeiters have gotten the wrong assayer initials, amongst other things. Perhaps they used the wrong year instead of initials? I don't know anyhow. I love these coins, but don't study them as I only have a couple of problem/details coins. As far as the gold coins, I didn't even bother to look at the authenticity of the coins because I was so distracted by the blatant efforts to pass them off as errors. Keep sharing your interesting coins!
You never know with fakers/forgers. Are they just too dumb to know those things? Do they somehow think they are being clever? Are they hoping to convince someone that they have a new variety worth thousands? Each new forger probably has a new subterfuge and each new subterfuge probably has a new line of reasoning behind it. We honest coin people probably shouldn't worry too much about why a forger forges, as much as we should be concerned with the how. Wondering about the why would just be a waste of time for us. Learning the how will prevent us honest coin buyers from being the victims the forgers want us to be. Thanks for posting those coins and your write-up. It all just adds to our arsenal. Here's some info on lamination errors : Search Results Lamination Here's some info on Spanish colonial coins : cointypes.htm When ever I ask questions around here, who ever answers usually posts a link as an extra source of explanation. I copy those links and store them on my computer in a folder I named "Coin Tools". Most of the links in my "Coin Tools" folder are from @paddyman98 Some others, as I've gotten better at researching coins and coin questions, I've found for myself. With these two, the top one is most likely from paddyman and the bottom one I found when myself and several other members, including @Seattlite86 (whom I call S86) were having a rousing discussion about the authenticity of another 8 Reales coin that was just about covered with chop marks. Perhaps a hundred or more. Anyway, my point is that all of the members here are very knowledgable in their own ways and very willing to help, and that when you find, or are given, good links to useful information, you should store them somewhere handy so that you'll have them, not only for your own use, but to help other members with their questions. Thanks for posting and Good Luck in your hunts. I can't wait to see your next group.
The #67 and 68 coins probably were made with homemade dies . They were not pressed together with other coins as someone said. No one can press coins together and make them look like these two coins , just not possible IMO. Although I'm not saying they are but they look really close to major clashed die coins .I have some fake American dollar coins here somewhere that were made with fake dies. They look just like silver dollars except they have some extra letters here and there on them and are magnetic .
@Seattlite86 @Hookman Thank you again for your replies. I am not sure that I was necessarily testing any of you about these pieces so much as I was probably testing myself to try to understand the origins of these. As was said, maybe the counterfeiters really are just that stupid and they don't even do their "due diligence" (all in the name of counterfeiting) to create the piece. @Hookman I like your idea of having an area to store good links to useful information. So many times there are excellent pieces of information that are seemingly lost in the sea of the internet. It can often be very difficult to dig those back out again later on unless you really know where to look. Speaking of 8 Reales with chop marks, I also have several examples of those that have a vast quantity of chop marks on them. They were purchased several years ago and I haven't looked at them for quite some time, but now that you have mentioned those I might dig them out to look them over again. As always, I appreciate all of the comments and replies on here and hope to get another lot of errors posted on here soon. I will be posting a new thread with another lot of errors soon. I welcome everyone to view/reply to that thread. If anyone has any other comments regarding this thread, feel free to reply. I was hoping this counterfeit/error combination lot of errors would attract a good discussion, and it has. I'm not sure what items I'll use for the next lot yet, but I guess everyone will know when I post that thread. Thank You.
