Ok, so this’ll be the last gold coin I post. I appreciate all the input on the others. This one might be a bit more tricky as there doesn’t seem to be as much diagnostic info out there on counterfeits. As always, photographing gold is a challenge and I did my best under various lighting setups. Thoughts on grade and authenticity would be appreciated!
I am not the go to guy either. I checked the mm placement and it seems to be correct. At least position wise with others on coinfacts. The photos are a bit too blurry to fully confirm size and detail.
Here is genuine example, which is PCGS graded MS-66. I don't care for the piece you posted because it appears to lumps of metal in the field. That looks like a casting to me. As you can see, this variety comes with smooth fields. The mintage, which was only 10,000 with the net down to 6,749 because the unsold pieces were melted, was not high enough for die states to occur. Here's another view of the obverse.
I think one of the biggest things I don't like about this coin, and several of the dollar coins you posted in a recent thread, is the "mushiness" of the letters. Notice on the real coins how the letters are crisp... and on the fakes they are "washed out". This is most apparent on the "sition" obverse right.
Yes the coin should definitely have smooth fields and in the bottom pics Minerva has doubling on her arm which is strange. I have one, can't find the pics but they're in the link below! https://www.cointalk.com/threads/gold-gold-gold-time-to-showoff-ツ.386318/page-17
Anthony Swiatek, in his book Encyclopedia of the Commemorative Coins of the United States, mentions that there are counterfeit examples of this coin. He goes on to state "displaying a soft strike, field depressions and tooling marks within inscriptions and above the S Mint mark". I think Jason's observation of mushiness of the letters makes this coin suspect of questionable authenticity.
Yeah…. Seems the Indians and one dollar princess are most convincingly counterfeited, but the Beijing mint is a prolific bunch….. I have one of these in my SDB and don’t have it in hand to compare, but I’m afraid that I’m not a big fan of this one either. It is just too lumpy.
