CollectForFun

Is it fake, as in, not .917 gold, or is it actual gold, just not an authentic sov?

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I don't see anything wrong about it. I must admit it's actually very smart business strategy. As already noted, there's no reason to damage the coin before returning to the RM, as that really wouldn't be nice.

As others mentioned above, it's likely due to the scales imprecision, or natural imperfection of breaking down the combibar. Just out of curiosity, the other 2 pieces are precisely 1 g according to your scales, or something above?

Am a bit curious - why are you concerned about seller fees only and not buyer's? Because, you know, you may find an auction house charging 0% to sellers, but if they take e.g. 25% from buyers, then buyers will anyway bid only up to 80% of their perceived lot's value (80*1.25=100), so your 0% alone won't guarantee you higher proceeds... So unless you have something else on your mind, I think for a seller it's always important to consider both seller as well as buyer fees.

@Dawnbreaker, I think I have just seen the same 5 francs listed at Catawiki, so I assume they were relisted after you did not accept the seller's offer the first time? Anyway, I would like to say that in my experience, Catawiki is pretty bad place for buying gold coins like this. Most historic gold coins that are offerred there are usually either in not very good condition, or the reserve price is too high, which is no wonder, if the seller needs to pay 12.5% provision. And so coins, fair premium on which should be 5-10% over spot, have reserve price set at 10-20% over spot, which some crazy buyers are still willing to bid, on top of which they however still need to pay 9% buyer's charge! Not mentioning postage, which is also often excessive. It feels so bad, seeing people bid so much e.g. for modern restrikes, which could be sourced quite cheaper and in better condition and safer directly from the mint or from any dealer nearby. The same with common LMU coins, e.g. French rooster 20 francs, sold at €340 reserve + 9% buyer's charge + postage = over €380 a piece. The only winner is Catawiki, collecting 21.5% from every trade. I know bidding is fun, but really, beware! If a coin, which should carry a 5-10% premium, is listed at a platform operating with 21.5% margin, you are unlikely to get a good deal...

Nice serial number, too.

Just reach out to your nearest local mint, or any other for that matter, and ask. Not sure if this list is complete, but there's plenty to choose from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mints. Private issues are regular part of their business. I know several people from my local circle of collectors who had their own medal designs successfully produced by the local mint. The lower the mintage, the bigger portion of the total budget is used on the die engraving. You could save some money if your design is relatively simple to engrave or if you satisfy yourself with just one-sided "coin". BTW note that what you issue will always be a medal or a round, never a coin (which is distinguished by a nominal value on it). At least I assume that it is illegal to produce your own coins in the UK 😁

EU has an annually updated official list of gold coins that meet the conditions to be treated as VAT exempt investment gold. You can find it here (and Tap for document text) and it does include the sovereign. So just refer them to this list and you should be able to claim 0% VAT. By the way, the list does not include all eligible coins, also those that are not included but meet the conditions are eligible for 0% VAT. The HS code is for assessing the customs duty and while there may be different codes for monetary/non-monetary gold, it's in general subject to 0% duty anyway.

I concur with the above, don't buy such damaged goods unless you are ready to treat these coins as piece of metal only and unless you get corresponding price, which in this case means several % below melt value. Even if you are tight on your budget, you will have much more joy from owning a nice coin instead, even if it costs a few euros more. There are plenty of French and Belgian francs and Dutch guldens around available for little premium and often in great condition from which you can choose instead...

Well, a quick search in auction results from recent months reveals that you could acquire a similar coin in much better condition for around half this price. E.g. this one. So it could make sense to wait for new offers at some reputable auctions and save some money plus have additional peace of mind...

Well and what kind of opinion are you interested in? Whether the coin is genuine? Or how much it's worth? Are you considering buying it, or are we discussing for educational purposes only? Don't be afraid to elaborate your request a bit more...

It is very likely the rest of the coins are genuine, just that they are base metal coins with very little value. Some of them could still be silver, e.g. the German 2 mark and Mexican peso, but even so they wouldn't likely be worth too much above their melt value. All in all, I would say the price you paid for this lot is just about right, if you like the coins from a collector's point of view. I would not expect anything really valuable in there, but I couldn't recognise all the coins so I would recommend that you do your own research with the help of e.g. Numista online catalogue, which will give you an indication of the coins' values.

I did not find recent auction sales of any graded ones, but ungraded was sold for £35,000 + 17% in December. London Coins link Interesting quote from the coin description: At the time of writing an example of this £200 2oz issue could be seen for sale on-line in excess of £80,000. I think such coins with unproven real value won't be sold through auctions very often because there the seller loses any control over the coin so they are entirely at the mercy of the auction house and its starting price and whether the right buyer appears at that particular auction. Plus there's the commission. BTW 35k was the starting price.

Why is 0% buyer's premium important to you? Whatever the premium, just bid up to your highest price divided by premium, that's all, isn't it?

I'm not sure if there even are any fractional Pd bullion coins, or if it's 1oz only (Edit: there apparently are some 1/2oz pandas). But there are 1/5/10/20g bars, or you can find Russian Pd coins from the 90s which were 1/4 and 1/2 oz.

I haven't bought from them yet but I am generally familiar with their brand. I am sure I was checking their various European sites many times for some good deals and although I have not made any transaction with them, I had never any impression that something wouldn't be right with this company. You can check their .eu site for additional background information on their history and operations. You can also check e.g. Trustpilot ratings for their Tavex.dk Danish operation, google reviews for Swedish tavex.se branch, etc., there's a lot of feedback, arguably generally positive one.

This is such a grey area in bullion trading. The coin is uncirculated (what does this even mean if a coin is not meant to circulate at all?), yet clearly damaged. Strictly speaking, the damage even caused the coin to lose part of its original weight. I understand that bullion-grade should not be purchased for its appearance but strictly weight, but marketing around it conveys the message of only perfect shiny coins, because let's be honest, that's exactly what customers expect to get. I wish dealers would be more assertive in their feedback to mints and tell them that supplying damaged goods is not acceptable, rather than turning a blind eye and passing the problem on to their customers... Anyway, glad to hear that the OP gets to receive the undamaged coin, as he deserves.

I would guess it's relatively modern piece. From what I could find, purity degree in an oval outline was introduced as an official hallmark in Italy only in 1934.

As if not being legally obliged equaled not being allowed to. Very rude response in my opinion...

My understanding is that you can hold silver and platinum in vaults without paying VAT thanks to the fact that you give up a substantial part of your ownership rights, such that you are effectively not treated as a real owner of the respective assets (for VAT purposes at least). As soon as you decide to exercise some of your ownership rights connected with specific tangible piece of metal, VAT kicks in. Regarding gold and platinum, I am actually not quite sure why platinum should be treated the same way as gold as they do not have much in common, other than being expensive metals and that some platinum is also used to produce investment coins and bars. As I understand it, special VAT regime for gold stems from the fact that it used to be a means of payment, so there are perhaps better arguments along those lines for silver to be VAT exempt than platinum... It's sad for platinum stackers and I like platinum, too, but it will hardly ever be different... On the other hand, I would not really be surprised if special VAT regime for gold will end one day.

This is so interesting! I've never seen these coins (medals? tokens?) before. I tried to search for more information about them but found only one other mention of them on the internet which you might have also seen over here. Do you have any other information? Which is also quite interesting is that the picture of the gold coin pasted in the thread under the link above seems to exactly match your coin (judging by several distinguishing marks - e.g. a dot in the middle of the cross, at 3 o'clock to the right of "V", marks on the edge under "RELIANCE", etc...). Could it be that it is the very same piece? Which also makes you wonder - how many of them there is? Is there any other at all? On the other hand, I cannot find any such similar features on the silver coins... Anyway, very interesting, thanks for sharing!

It's the Spanish Royal Mint. And the denomination is a joke. Of course denomination on buillon coins does not really matter as such, but how do they want to create a valuable and sought after coin if the first perception you get is seeing 1,5 euro value? Not good decision in my opinion...

They could have also meant "billon" sovereigns...🤔😉

For your reference, I attach a link to a German forum where the same question was asked 10 years back. Apparently, this particular type of coin was commonly forged even then, so it is not impossible that yours is not genuine either. But, on the bright side, the forgeries may have the right gold content... https://www.numismatikforum.de/viewtopic.php?t=42418

Below is a couple of links to Numista pages of some of these coins plus links to pics of certificates for these coins Samoa, minted by the Royal Mint, according to this Gambia, also Royal Mint as you can see here St. Helena, Royal Mint etc... You can probably find all of them on eBay to get an idea on the asking price. I don't think they have any particular appeal for "real" collectors but hey, they are proof and silver, so that's definitely at least something. If you had difficulty finding info on any particular coin just let me know and I can help locating it.