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A couple of years ago I bought a replica

jonathanbjonathanb Posts: 3,588 ✭✭✭✭✭
in U.S. Coin Forum

A couple of years ago I bought a replica of an obscure medal struck in colonial Florida under Spanish rule.

The seller identified the medal properly, and linked to the finest known of a handful of examples, which they pointed out sold in the Ford sales for $230K. They didn't mention that the same example sold more recently at Heritage for $156K. That's ok. I don't mind a little salesmanship. Besides, theirs was clearly a lower grade. Not to mention a replica.

Some folks on this board know that I like weird stuff. This qualified, for sure. I recognized what the medal was. I've never seen a replica of this medal, so I was curious how it was made. The seller had pictures. As a replica, it was decent quality. It might have been a 19th century electrotype. Some electrotypes were made very well. You can usually spot a seam on the edge as long as it occurs to you to look for one. I didn't bother asking the seller to look. I think I bid $25 or so. In the end, nobody else cared and I won it for $11.38 including shipping.

When I got the medal in hand, the first thing I did was look at the edge to confirm the seam... and I couldn't find one. That was odd, but not unheard-of. The seam can be hard to spot on good electrotypes.

Next I tried a ring test. Most electrotypes are filled with lead. Lead doesn't pass the ring test; it says "thud" when you tap it.

This medal said "ting!"

Huh!

I looked at the surfaces, and I saw obvious bubbles produced during the casting process. So this was a cast copy that somehow gave a strong ring test. Question answered.

Except that I had read the Ford sale description first, and a few others that I found online, and by then I knew that the originals of this medal were struck on cast planchets. And just in case that wasn't confusing enough, there were also examples that were known to be cast copies of the cast originals.

How do you authenticate a cast original versus a cast copy of a cast original? I still don't know!

Finally I realized what I should have realized in the first place. If this was a replica, it had to be a replica of something. There are only a handful of examples known, and I already knew that this was more worn than the finest example in the Ford sale. Go online and find pictures of the other known examples, find which one matches mine, and there's the answer. I actually had that happen once before. I bought a very rare white metal version of the Columbia and Washington medal (about a dozen known in each of copper, silver, and white metal), and I was totally excited until Vicken at Stack's pointed out that Stack's sold the exact same example in copper a few years earlier. My white metal version was a copy of their copper one. Too bad for me that time.

I found pictures of almost all of the other examples of the Florida medal. None of them matched mine.

I tried a few other bits of bookkeeping. The weight of mine didn't match any of the others, and neither did the diameter. But these medals were produced by hand, without a collar. NONE of the weights and diameters matched each other. Mine were in the same ballpark. Were they close enough? I have no idea. You can't exactly look up expected tolerances for something like this.

I considered briefly if I should get an elemental analysis, then decided against. None of the other examples had elemental analyses published. How would it help me to get one, when I didn't know what the composition was supposed to be?

I considered getting it slabbed. I decided that wouldn't help me either. I could send have sent it here, or across the street. With all due respect to both parties, I wouldn't have believed ANY answer they gave me. If they agreed it was counterfeit, they wouldn't tell me why they thought that, and I've learned nothing. If they send it back as Authenticity Uncertain, I knew that much already. Even if they put it in a slab, I still wouldn't trust that they got it right on something this obscure. If I tried to sell it, my conscience would still have mede me disclose that I bought it from someone who was sure that it was a replica.

At that point I ran out of questions to ask.

I didn't need to worry about recovering my costs. What to do next? If I kept it raw, I'd still be wondering 20 years from now if it was real or not. If I tried to sell it -- either raw or slabbed -- I had no clue what it was worth. Clearly "less than $156K" compared to the last sale of the nicer ex-Ford example. Probably at least a couple hundred dollars, since there's a small market of people who appreciate high-quality replicas. I could pick any number in that range and even if I found a buyer there's a decent chance I'd regret it later.

What would you do in my shoes?

For me in my own shoes... I punted. I sent an email to Vicken at Stack's. I sent him pictures, and I told him the whole story. I bought it as a replica. This was NOT my area of expertise. I explained that I'd ruled it out as a poor-quality replica, which only left every other option. I told him that if he agrees that it's a replica, then I want it back and I'll keep it. If he's confident that it's real, he can sell it for whatever price it brings.

These are the pictures I sent him:

He said he'd take a look, so I sent it to him.

He took a look. He showed it to some other people. He sent it to our hosts, who sent it back to him in plastic.

And then I waited, because I still didn't trust anyone's opinion. There's a saying, "It's worth what somebody will pay." This was that. If the buyers looked at it and said, "Look at that, XXXX doesn't know what they're talking about", it could sell for nothing, or go unsold. Second-guessing is part of the game.

I had several bidding levels that I was watching. If the bidders decided it was a replica, then the bids wouldn't pass a few hundred dollars. I had sold my best score several years earlier for about 160x what I paid for it, so I had a new personal record if the bidding reached about $2,000 for this one.

After that... I had no clue. The market is thin. There are few examples available. Previous sale records don't mean a whole lot, compared to the phase of the moon and who had their coffee that morning.

A slightly damaged (but still high grade) example sold in a British auction a few years about for about $20,000. It would be great if mine could reach that level!

And then I had a higher number that maybe mine might get close to, if all the stars aligned just right.

I watched the live auction as the bids passed $20,000... then kept going... then stopped on my impossible number. And then after a pause two MORE bids came in beyond that and it was finally done.

Many years ago I posted another thread eBay rip -- personal record shattered. I thought that one was unbeatable.

Many thanks to Vicken, Stack's, and our hosts for giving me a new record that I'll never beat.

...probably!

Pictures from the Stack's auction last year:

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