LawrenceChard

The weight is stamped on the front of the bar "5 บาท"! 🙂 Of course, it helps if you can read some Thai. บาท = baht. The original meaning of the word baht was as a unit of weight equal to 15.244 grams. The standard purity of Thai gold is 96.5 percent, the actual gold content of one baht by weight is 15.244 × 0.965 = 14.71046 grams; equivalent to about 0.47295191859437 troy ounces. A quick spot of mental arithmetic (well, a spreadsheet) gives 2.36475959297185 troy ounces of fine gold. When I originally posted, I had only seen photographs of the bar and the test result. A member of our warehouse team had done the testing, but when I was in the office today, I gave him some further training to complete the missing fields. He also used calipers to measure the dimensions: Length 43.61mm, Width 18.16mm, Depth 5.55mm I will add the above to the original post.

Hah, I didn't even notice those, but they are the caratage as shown by the Niton machine. It assumes some users are dummies who can't understand percentages or decimals, and therefore work for or as jewellers.

The photos are of a medallic piece in hallmarked 9ct gold. We found one in a 2012 London Coins auction described as a replica sovereign, and the sold price was £110. I don't know off-hand whether they charge a buyers' premium in addition. Today, I got the opportunity to measure one of them 22.73mm diameter x 1.93mm thick. They actually looked far too big to be sovereigns, so I was surprised at the relatively small difference. If my reading of the slighly obscure hallmark is correct, they were assayed at Birmingham in 2003, and the sponsor's mark appears to be POC. Dumbo! I forgot to mention the weight 76.35 grams. Correction: I think that should read 6.35 grams! I must have been half asleep when I typed 76.25 grams. that would have been an impressive replica. 🙂

OCD Old Coin Disease? 🙂

I suppose they would grow on you! Is that what you call bonsai?

Yes, but only on the dealer's margin, so if one was to buy it for 99%, and sell it for 105%, the VAT payable (by the dealer), would be 1/6th of 6% = 1%. Most investors would not see or care about the calculation. This assumes that the dealer operates a secondhand special scheme, which not all dealers do. I very much doubt for example that the Royal Mint use it. By coincidence, earlier today, we were offered about 3,000 silver Britannias by a big dealer. The dealer had bought these back from an investor, but did not operate the special scheme, so was asking a second tranche of VAT on them. It seems dumb to me to voluntarily reward HMRC with two lots of VAT on the same goods, and a shame for potential investors to be denied the opportunity to buy at a saving, albeit not necessarily 20%. In my opinion, the dealer in question has got things too easy.

You are undoubtly correct, but 99.99% gold in not pure gold, and despite one part per 10,000 being a very small proportion, it is likely that colour would be affected byt whaterver the admetal was, copper would produce a reddish cast, whereas silver would produce a paler, yellowish cast. As an example, modern gold sovereigns are alloyed with copper, about 83 parts per thousand, whereas older sovereigns, pre'QEII, usually contain about 3 ppt of silver. This makes a major visual difference to their colour, as almost everybody knows.

That's a nice looking coin! Simple. If you want to create the best looking proof coin possible, it is important to polish both the dies and the blank. Polishing is an abrasive process, and is also usually done using an abrasive medium such as paste, which could contain diamond dust, corundum, carborundum, etc. Even if you only used a soft cloth without past, whcih would take a long time, polishing is essentially a mechanical scratching process. If you look carefully at anything with a polished finish, you would find scratches. These might be microscopic. Striations tend to show up more or less noticeably depending on the angle of incident light. Photography, which is all about lighting, often catches features which the naked eye would miss. There is an importan difference between hairlines, and other features, on the die, and similar features on a coin. You could, and probably should, consider pre-production differences as features, but post-production differences as damage. Of course, that also leaves a gap in the middle, which is production faults themselves. Most of this is a simple question of logic, or trying to reconstruct or understand the production process.

Thanks, the hairlines look like they have been caused by particles of grit or dust. The coin does not look like it has been cleaned using abrasive.

Not as bad as the horse got later! 🙂

We do not see gold bars from Thailiand very often, but: Technically, these can't be classed as "Investment Gold" for VAT purposes, as they are only 96.5% gold, rather than 99.5%. S. Siriporn Gold Smith I presume this says 5 baht, but I will check the next time I go for a massage. This result is within tolerance range for the stamped 96.5% Addendum: The weight is stamped on the front of the bar "5 บาท"! 🙂 Of course, it helps if you can read some Thai. บาท = baht. The original meaning of the word baht was as a unit of weight equal to 15.244 grams. The standard purity of Thai gold is 96.5 percent, the actual gold content of one baht by weight is 15.244 × 0.965 = 14.71046 grams; equivalent to about 0.47295191859437 troy ounces. A quick spot of mental arithmetic (well, a spreadsheet) gives 2.36475959297185 troy ounces of fine gold. When I originally posted, I had only seen photographs of the bar and the test result. A member of our warehouse team had done the testing, but when I was in the office today, I gave him some further training to complete the missing fields. He also used calipers to measure the dimensions: Length 43.61mm, Width 18.16mm, Depth 5.55mm

2 of the most respected here in the UK? I can only think of 1! 🙂

1976 Panama 150 Balboas Platinum Proof 150th Anniversary A collectable as opposed to a bullion issue: Premium?

Is this too subtle? ?

To the coin design, or my avatar?

My Photoshop skills are very basic, which is why most of our coin photos are done by Doug. He did come up with a more Gothic look: It would look good in a Premium Uncirculated version, or for short: PUnc 🙂

... or a little darker: ?

Here is another photo, taken from lower angle: It turned out that we still had one of the unusual batch left.

Gothic version of Queen Elizabeth II? Howzat?

It's slightly complicated. There is/was a scheme whereby if you bought silver coins made outside the EU, without VAT, you only paid VAT on part of your cost, possibly commission. Some of this was via Estonia I think. It came about when German VAT rate on silver coins increased from 7% ro 19%. There were and probably still are doubts about its legality. We investigated it, but decided not to try offering it because of the contingent risk. There are numerous threads about it on TSF. I you can't find the theads, I am sure some member can point you to them.

That's what we are all worried about, a farm full of cows, and milk spots everywhere! 🙂

You can't really expect silver coins to retain full brilliant lustre for over 170 years. The reason for the lack of proof finish is because most were struck in non-proof finish. There were proof versions of the 1847, in gold and in silver, both very rare. The 1853 coins were only struck as proofs and are rarer than the 1847s.

... so they can milk it further... Ah, so that's what's causing all the milk spots. or... Wednesday, 28 July National Milk Chocolate Day 2021 in United States Perhaps the RM thought it was National Milk Spots Day! 🙂

If the RM hear that suggestion, I guess they would be happy to make 3.. ... or 4 ... or...🙂