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Gold Turkish coin/pin - what to do?

rlhjr72rlhjr72 Posts: 2 ✭
in Q & A Forum

I have an elderly family friend who found this coin in his boxes of junk collected over the years. It's an 1861 22k gold Turkish 500 Kurus coin. I've done research on it and have found it to be fairly rare and valuable.

Numista's rarity index is 95 and a mintage of 30,000 see:
1277 (1861) ١٠
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces34993.html

The problem, as you can see from the photos, is somewhere in the last 157 years, someone decided to turn it into a pin. I took it to a local coin shop and his suggestion would be to have a jeweler remove the pin, have it graded, then it may be possible to sell it for its collector's value rather than its gold value.

I've always heard that damaging a coin in any way basically renders it not valuable to a collector. Does the rarity of this coin change that? Does anyone have any suggestions, either to follow the coin shop's advice, or just melt it for its gold value? Or try to sell it with the pin attached? Thank you for any advice.


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    JBKJBK Posts: 14,755 ✭✭✭✭✭

    You will never undo the damage that was done. Calculate the melt value and then try to sell it for more than that as is. If is has a premium to anyone, they will pay more than melt.

    If it is super rare it may retain some collector value but otherwise.....

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    Insider2Insider2 Posts: 14,452 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Keep it as jewelry.

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    JBKJBK Posts: 14,755 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 3, 2018 10:21PM

    Years ago I felt that coins made into jewelry, etc. needed to be reclaimed or restored as coins. But, the fact is that most of these coins have been transformed into something else and should be maintained as such.

    You have either a very attractive pin, a badly damaged coin, or scrap gold.

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    TomaToma Posts: 58 ✭✭✭

    I'd wear it, a lot of history in that coin. It is especially nice because it was minted when the Ottomans were making a lot of social reforms towards Ottoman Christians. Regardless I'd say it is probably worth melt value unless you meet a Turkish coin-turned-into-pin collector.

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    Namvet69Namvet69 Posts: 8,671 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'd wear it also. As least the coin is horizontal to the pin. I think it would look good on one of my cowboy hats. Peace Roy

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    rlhjr72rlhjr72 Posts: 2 ✭

    Thanks everyone for the advice. The old man has decided to just melt it and take the $1300. Before I send it to the refinery does anyone who knows the gold market have any thoughts on what direction gold prices are going in the near future? Looks like they are at a yearly low and dropping right now, should I wait a couple of months or send it now? Or maybe buy it off him for current price and hold it for years?

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