rlhjr72
Senior Member
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. "Never rub your coins in the field" 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?
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. "Never rub your coins in the field" 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?
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