jim4silver
Silver Member
- Apr 15, 2008
- 3,662
- 495
Generally speaking, in the coin world, the term "coin" refers to a coin minted by a government some place in the world. It will usually have some type of $ value stamped on it from its country of origin and will have legal tender status. Some of these "coins" can be real money minted in the past to spend as currency (US 90% pre- 65 coinage) or modern day commemoratives, bullion, etc. Examples of bullion are the US ASE, Canadian Maple, Austrian Philharmonic, various Australian mint issues, etc. Interesting though that the world popular gold South African Kruggerand does not list a money value if memory serves, but it still a great choice.
When a private company mints a silver, gold or other PM coin it is generally referred to as a "round" or more rarely a "medal". Sometimes a government will come out with a PM "coin" that has no legal tender status and will call it a "medal" too, but that is somewhat rare at least for the US- like the gold art medallions from the 80's (one had Mark Twain, and some other ones with folks I had never heard of) or the modern day 911 silver medallion, etc.
To make it easy, I look for any PM "coin" issued by a world gov. Whether coin or medal I don't care, but I try to avoid any private minted stuff nowadays simply due to excessive counterfeiting. I also try to stick to .999 silver coins if possible. Although I do collect 92.5% (sterling silver) world coins if the deal is good- some issues have high collector value but can be bought locally for near melt because the local stores just want to flip it and don't want to mess with ebay, etc. But be careful buying any silver coin or medal that is sterling or lower purity (other than 90% US silver) because most coin dealers (here at least) will not want to pay you much when you sell sterling because it is not .999 and they will often tell you "I have to send this to the refiner to be melted and they only pay me x% of spot", etc., and you can get somewhat ripped off when they offer far less than melt.
Even though sterling is more pure than 90% us junk, the demand for us junk is so high generally that people are sometimes willing to pay MORE for it than .999 coins on a pure silver content basis. I would not do that myself though except when I get good deals on lower mintage US commemorative silver dollars that are the same composition as the Peace and Morgan dollars.
Just my opinion.
Jim
If I am going to buy gold coins I would want them pure gold
