Help for newbie: 1881 eagle

[thesaint-migration]

Hopefully somebody here can help me shed some light on this.

I came into possession of a 1881 $10 in pretty good state. It has seen some circulation, but fine details are still well defined: Ms. Liberty's hair and individual pearls in her hairdo; "petals" in the 13 stars; fine lines on the eagle's shield (sorry, I know very little about coins and I might be using improper terms). There are a few very light scratches, especially around the head and on the cheek.

Just where the hairline ends, in front of the head, there are two little spots that look weird: they are close together, irregular shape and each less than half a millimeter large. Looking at them in good light it seems like they are a different colour than gold, almost copper-like. The impression is that a gold layer has been scratched off exposing the underlying metal. I left a drop of acidified thiourea on top of them and they turned black after a few minutes. Rinsing in water and rubbing with a soft cloth turned them back to their original copper colour. Acid don't seem to dissolve them, so it doesn't seem like rust (unless there can be very resistant rust)

I thought the coin was a fake, gold plating on top of some copper alloy, the measurements though came up clean: 27 mm diameter, 2 mm thickness and 16.7 grams weight. At this point I'm thinking the two spots could be some sort of inclusions, rather than scratches.

I'll post a good picture as soon as possible (hard to take, since the spots are so small)

 

I'd be extremely grateful if some expert out there could suggest what they can possibly be and/or ways to get rid of them.

Thanks a lot

[midwest]

Ok just don't mess with the coin anymore. You may have allready done some damage.

 

Ok do the spots on your coin look like the one i'm about to show you only smaller?

 

 

 

If so sounds like a few copper spots and there actually ok. Sometimes the problem can interfere with the beauty of the coin however often they don't.

 

Also what is the mintmark on the coin?

[thesaint-migration]

Thanks for the reply. It's a Philadelphia 1881, the most common of all. I just want it to look good. From your picture it looks like your copper spots are flush with the surface, so they look like discoloration and I would be cool with that. The ones I've got though it seems like they are beneath the surface and were exposed when the gold got scratched away. My idea is that if I manage to remove them somehow, then I'm left with only a couple of very little dents in the gold, which wouldn't look half as bad.

[TomB]

Any surface manipulation you attempt, of the kind you are writing about, will lower the value of your coin. If you want an older gold coin but don't like the look of your current piece I would suggest that you sell your current coin and buy another.

[thesaint-migration]

Thanks for the reply.

I know that manipulations, cleaning, etc. lower a coin's value. I'm not really interested in numismatics, though, and besides being that a very common coin it should be valued at about its weight in gold anyway (of course, if I had a 1933 double eagle I wouldn't be playing with it).

I was just asking for any advice for cleaning those spots and for a confirmation that my coin is indeed genuine. Is the weight/dimensions check enough to dissipate any doubts about that ?

Cheers

[thesaint-migration]

Don't know how to display pictures on-line the way you guys do.

In the attachment to this post you can see the back. Lighting is not that good and you can barely see the incriminated spot.

I've attached a picture of the other side to my previous post.

I'll try to take a good blow up of the thing and post it soon.

[DaveG]

If the coin's measurements (weight, diameter, etc.) are proper, then the coin is either genuine or a counterfeit made of the proper amount of gold.

 

From your pictures, the coin now has a polished appearance, so you're destroyed whatever numismatic value the coin might have had - from the detail remaining on the coin, that could have been a significant amount.

 

Most likely, what you're looking at are copper spots, which are the result of improperly mixed alloy - they can't be removed without harming the coin.

[thesaint-migration]

Thank you DaveG

 

I guess a Titanium core with Gold cladding could have the same weight. Don't know how common such counterfeitures are. I imagine one wouldn't go the trouble for a common year. Then again a rare coin would be investigated more throughly.

Don't know if any of you guys has any experience with that.

 

The polished state of the coin is more or less the same as when I got it. The mintage of the '81 Philly is about 4 millions; I would imagine more than a few can be found today still naturally nice and glittering. Anyway, I can throw it in the dryer with some wet rags, dirt, and sulfur and and make it look like it has gone through the First Battle of Manassas twice.

[Hoot]

I guess a Titanium core with Gold cladding could have the same weight. Don't know how common such counterfeitures are. I imagine one wouldn't go the trouble for a common year. Then again a rare coin would be investigated more throughly.

Don't know if any of you guys has any experience with that.

 

I just read an article in Coin World about the appearance of a common-date Morgan dollar counterfeit. This practice was quite common in the period of time that the bullion value of U.S,. coinage was exceeded by the face value. The common practice of fiduciary coinage began at the time of the California gold rush and the appearance of the trime in the United States. This made it quite profitable for counterfeiters to turn specie into fakes. This only got worse after the silver rush of the early 1870s and the production of the Morgan dollar.

 

Hoot

[Oldtrader3]

Titanium weighs 40% the weight of steel. You must have meant Tungsten which is very close to the weight of gold. However, Tungsten is very hard to strike and melts at 3400 degrees Centigrade, well beyond the temperature of most casting equipment. Tungsten normally is sintered and has noticible grain. I seriously doubt that your coin is Tungsten.

[DaveG]

thesaint:

 

I guess no one's talked about this and we (I certainly) forgot you know little about coins, but in any event:

 

Counterfeit coins are generally one of three varieties, contemporary counterfeits, post-WWII gold counterfeits and numismatic counterfeits.

 

contemporary counterfeits were made during the times that the actual coin circulated and were meant to fool merchants, etc. in commerce. Silver coins were usually counterfeited with lead or some other mixture of base metal that roughly resembled silver. Gold coins were usually counterfeited with brass. As a result, usually only small (dollar and quarter eagle - 2 1/2 dollars) coins were counterfeited. There were also some gold coins that were altered by being split open, hollowed out and their centers filled with a platinum disc (back when platinum was less expensive per ounce than gold). These platinum-filled fakes are very rare today.

 

Post-WWII gold coins were generally good quality counterfeits and were often made of the proper amount of gold. They were usually made in the Middle East (Lebanon) to take advantage of the premium over bullion price that sovereigns, gold dollars, quarter and half eagles ($5 coins), etc. received in the market. Usually these counterfeits are of pretty good quality and are of common-date coins.

 

Numismatic counterfeits are usually quite good copies of rare coins that are intented to fool numismatists. They are almost always of the proper gold alloy.

 

It's very unlikely that you would have a counterfeit coin that is composed of some relatively esoteric metal that has been gold plated. If you do, however, it might be worth more than a genuine gold coin to a collector of counterfeit coins, as long as you don't ruin it by scratching it or exposing it to acid, etc.