CollectForFun

What's this chart by the way? Upthread you say it's US$/gold? What ratio exactly?

The one I have meets my needs so I can recommend it. The brand is Levenhuk, you can check their product range on https://www.levenhuk.com/catalogue/magnifiers/series-zeno-gem/. Illumination can definitely help. And it costs so little anyway that there is no reason not to choose the better option, in my opinion.

Actually, found something very similar here: https://www.moviarg.com/medallas/CRBH.html where it says that it's a silver button. It seems it has similar mark on the obverse where it used to be attached to clothes (?) so that's probably it.

Looks like some kind of imitation of the Spanish (colonial) 2 reales, judging by the size. Like a game token or some other type of token e.g. payment token, maybe issued by some A.Fernandez to his customers, workers...

Actually, is there anything to discuss? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Willess_Williams

Well, it was sold for 20 euros hammer price plus auction commission (~20%) so ~24 euros total.

Certainly interesting coins, thanks for sharing. I would also agree that you paid more or less fair price and if nothing else got a nice souvenir from your holiday which can even increase in value over time! Just for the record, the latest auction results for these coins were Botswana sold at EUR 20+%, Tanzania unsold at CHF 20+%.

That's quite disputable in my opinion...

They want it like that...:

I'm sorry I have no view if this is good or bad but I definitely think it was a bit too long and also published more than 1,5 years ago! ☺️

Thanks for posting an update and photos of the coin - it looks fabulous in its special-label holder! And by the way, I think you can relax, your annoyance with NGC over the guarantee is probably just a misunderstanding. According to NGC T&C: So in your case your item received a grade on the Photo Certificate, but issuing this certificate and grade alone would not mean the Guarantee applies. But if an item is additionally also encapsulated, which is also your case, then the Guarantee of course does apply. So, the Photo Certificate which you received is just a little extra which you in fact do not need, as it's primarily meant for coins that remain raw, unslabbed. And maybe that's part of the cause for the delay - maybe Spink first asked only for the Photo Certs but later decided to have the coins regularly slabbed?

Alas, the postage is very often a deal breaker for many otherwise good purchases at auctions if you have to compete with room bidders or locals who can go and pick up their lots or pay just local postage. In your situation it may be worth asking the auction house if they could maybe use some cheaper shipping method. Maybe they use e.g. FedEx as a rule and hence the higher cost but may agree that they use regular post as an exception. Worked for me a few times.

I've got one more, the best choice so far imo: Sweden 5 kronor 2.24g .900

I don't see any reason why you should try to achieve 1 oz precisely, but if you really need to, your best chance is either - 1994 1/15oz maple - some of the Niue 2g .999 5 dollars or Solomon Islands 10 dollars - George I or George III 1/4 guinea 2.1g .9167 However, none of those particularly easily available I'm afraid...

https://www.spink.com/lot/22111004060 https://auktionen.sincona.com/Los/43/145.0/ https://www.ngccoin.com/certlookup/2124443-033/NGCDetails/ Graded "Details" sold for CHF 3,000+%, out of the slab with tooling admitted in the lot description sold for £3,500+% just 4 months later. Details slab adds very little if anything to the coin's value...

Why do you expect that Spink be impartial and not try to improve the sale in any way they can? As long as they don't provide intentionally misleading descriptions (their reputation would go down the hill quickly then) I don't see anything wrong with what they do - they provide NGC assessment as well as their own opinion and of course they won't be arguing with favourable NGC grade.

De-slabbing a coin (or any graded collectible for that matter) if the owner isn't happy with the grade is quite normal I would say. Spink just tries to reach as high price at the auction as possible. If the slab doesn't help its case, there's no reason why they should keep it slabbed. The coin is still the same and the interested buyer is free to decide if they want it or not. I understand that when you can't see the coin in person you must rely on pictures and description provided, but that's the cost of bidding online without knowing what exactly you are bidding on. Those are the rules of the game we play (and therefore it's important to remember that we do it mostly for fun! ☺️).

We coin collectors perhaps tend to overestimate the premier status of NGC in the overall collectibles grading industry. But the fact is, that while NGC grades around 4 million coins a year (info based on data from the previous 3 years), the cards grading equivalent PSA (not from this CCG family of companies but a competitor) reportedly graded over 1 million cards in October 2022 alone. So the reach and significance of some of these other grading companies may well be much greater than we would ever be willing to admit.

Hello @Katiec, look what I found! Look familiar? 😉 As it turned out, AFM is indeed the name of the producer: AFM from Palermo (as @stefffana rightly identified). This is their webpage where you can also see their products: http://www.afm.it and here you could even buy some of them: https://www.argenteriamb.it/en/24_afm-argenti.

In any case, they are charming coins in their own right ☺️

Interesting coins. I especially like the engraver's signature on the obverse. Btw why Details? Because cleaned?

Look what I found 😉 https://24carat.co.uk/1997goldenweddingcrowncollection.html Some quite funny remarks in there!

First of all congratulations on your purchase! Is that the coin you won? Definitely a nice foundation of your (hopefully) future collection! As regards slabbing of these coins, I noticed that Spink does this often even for not so special coins and quite likely this is to appeal to US market, but here it surely serves also another purpose, that is, to guarantee the Ellerby Hoard origin. Therefore I think it's only positive if they sent the coins for relabelling and NGC's special "Ellerby Area Hoard" label looks really nice! So I would be happy about that, even if it means delays, which of course is not ideal. Regarding "the conversion of ‘Details’ to ‘Genuine’" I am not very sure what they mean, as NGC does not have 'Genuine' labels to my knowledge. If a coin gets Details grade, it is still geniune, the same genuine as if it got a regular numerical grade. So, not sure what that is about. Edit: I have just realised NGC has 'Genuine' labels for El Cazador shipwreck coins and likely also for other such coins where their provenance is important. On those labels they do not state grade, just certify the provenance. So presumably that's what it's about - NGC already assigned Details grade to some of those coins but on the final Ellerby Hoard labels they will not mention Details grade, just Genuine?

Advantage of coming from a country where we do not even know what the ounce is, let alone how many grams ☺️

Full grading scale here: https://www.ngccoin.com/specialty-services/ngcx-10-point-grading-scale/ Divided to 0.1 from 10 to 9. Then 8.8 - 8.5 - 8.3. From 8 below the step is 0.5. So in total 30 grades, the same as on the current 1-70 scale. So it's really just an effort to open the market of graded coins to a wider audience - it's easier to explain to a complete outsider that "10 is the best grade".