A correctly attributed counterfeit gold plated platinum sovereign, dated 1872, appeared in the World Numismatic Auctions December 2007 sale. This reminded the editor of a number of similar contemporary counterfeits of coins from several European countries with dates usually varying from the 1850's to the 1870's. These counterfeits were made from platinum, which was cheap at the time, and gold plated. It is presumed that the platinum originated in South America and was initially imported into Spain. Circumstantial evidence points to the counterfeiting taking place in Barcelona or the surrounding region, see Dyer below. Counterfeits from this period are known of British, French and Spanish coins. G.P.Dyer in the "Bulletin on Counterfeits" published an informative paper on the British coins in 1979. It has not been possible to locate a comparable examination of the French and Spanish counterfeits. However the French website Infonumis does provided photographs of a large number of such counterfeits of 10 and 20 Francs coins. A number of these counterfeits do not show any signs of gold plating whether this is because it has worn away or was never present, is not always apparent. Dyer examined platinum counterfeit sovereigns of four different dates, 1861, 1862, 1870 and 1872. Similar to the World Numismatic Auctions example shown across, the three 1872 counterfeits examined all had the die number 29 on the reverse. With one exception (17.44 g/cc) the relative density of the thirteen counterfeits examined varied between 19.63 to 20.36 g/cc. This is lower than the relative density of pure platinum (21.45 g/cc) but the alloy was considered to contain alloying amounts of copper. The spectrographic analysis of one coin found 3.4 percent copper. The 91.6 percent gold alloy used in sovereigns has a relative density of about 17.5 g/cc. Dyer concluded that the coins were struck probably by coin dies, "..produced from a pair of matrices manufactured by forcing a genuine coin into a piece of hot steel." The dates on these counterfeits were often crude suggesting the numerals were produced by hand on the obverse dies. There is no evidence to suggest this type of counterfeit was made after about 1880. This is believed to be due to the rising price of platinum making its use in such counterfeits uneconomic. [Sources: World Numismatic Auctions; "Counterfeit Sovereigns in Platinum" G.P.Dyer, Bulletin on Counterfeits, Vol. 4, N0. 2/3, Summer/Autumn 1979; Infonumis]
Interesting article, thanks. What are these platinum "counterfeits" worth today? More or less than a genuine one?
