And the fact that bothers me...who told that the coins in wildwinds are 100% authentic??
I almost said the same thing but... Anyway, I just came back from a
coin show in Virginia and saw a few
gold coins, one of them I thought looked like what Monty is showing us here. But... that coin was 100% authentic and I
had no doubts whatsoever. Again, being no expert in
gold coins, I will pass on further comments. However, I am
still sceptical, especially as Scott mentioned today at the show, this one does not look like a typical
Byzantine clipping. It is clearly too smooth around the edges.
In response to a comment above regarding faking $200 coins. Of course there are
fakes of coins that are in that
price range, even below that. As Alexios and
Stefan said, there are many tourist
fakes, especially in
Turkey. There are also some really
good Bulgarian "
fake masters" who are
still in business. I recently purchased a silver coin in the $200 range which I thought could be
fake based on just the photos. When I received it and took a few high
quality pics, I knew it was
fake and others confirmed that too. And it was "only" $200 and was intended to be $200.
Since Alexios mostly collects
gold coins, I would tend to agree with
his "feel". If
Val says it is a
cast, then it is a
cast. No questions asked
))
Monty, why don't you do us a favor and try to take a few
very good close-up pictures of the coin. Take one of the edges as well. That might
help. Then hopefully we'll have a better idea.
Cheers everyone!