Another KG for me

Greylock

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Jun 10, 2012
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Western MA
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This one has me a little confused the date looks like 1778 but I'm not sure. It also is not a copper coin. Maybe brass or bronze. I took some before and after pics just incase I ruined it while cleaning but it didn't come out too bad. Can anyone help me figure what this is? Maybe counterfeit? Sometimes when i look at it it looks like 1787 or 1777. Besides that it was an average hunt. Few buttons a little round ball a broken clip of some sort a New York State seal button and some random brass. Thanks for looking.


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Upvote 3
HiTom,

It's definitely counterfeit--looks to be a somewhat crudely cast KG made of lead or a lead alloy...a very cool find as far as I'm concerned...much better than the real thing! I also really like the broken belt clip. Excellent hunt!
 

I was thinking counterfeit. It rang up in the brass range. Definitely not copper. It's pretty solid if it were lead it would be softer. Does bronze tarnish?
 

Here is another photo of the date. Looks like 1787. Kinda hard to tell but the date seems to be spaced out.

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Yes, I'm pretty sure that bronze does tarnish...it looks like your coin had some green on it. But I think bronze is worth more than copper, so I doubt someone would make a counterfeit from bronze. Most likely a lead alloy of some sort. Hard to believe someone would have accepted that coin as the real thing with the tell-tale casting signs. Pretty cool coin!
 

Tough to tell from the photos but it has a nice greyish green patina. That's why I thought maybe brass
 

It would have had to have been a metal that was cheaper than copper and relatively easy to melt. I'm not sure what types of lead alloys are possible, but here is a table of melting points of various metals. Brass would look like gold I believe, so I doubt they used brass.

Metals - Melting Temperatures

Here's an exerpt re bronze which I guess is a possibility:

Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and tough, and it was so significant in antiquity that the Bronze Age was named after the metal. However, historical pieces were often made interchangeably of brasses (copper and zinc), and bronzes with different compositions, so modern museum and scholarly descriptions of older objects increasingly use the more inclusive term "copper alloy" instead. Historically the term latten was used for such alloys.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze

And here's some info on pewter which has a low melting point:

Pewter is a malleable metal alloy, traditionally 85–99% tin, with the remainder consisting of copper, antimony, bismuth and sometimes, less commonly today, lead. Silver is also sometimes used. Copper and antimony act as hardeners while lead is common in the lower grades of pewter, which have a bluish tint. It has a low melting point, around 170–230 °C (338–446 °F), depending on the exact mixture of metals. The word pewter is likely a variation of the word spelter, a term for zinc alloys (originally a colloquial name for zinc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewter
 

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King George II. Will date from 172?- 1760. Nice find. If you're seeing that much of the date, it's probably 1737 or 1757. Too bad date isn't more legible. I gotta get a day when I can get out with you. VERY busy. But I will find time. Todd
 

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Nice digs Greylock. Half of my KG's are counterfeits. I like them better then the real ones.
 

Great finds! I would love to find an old US coin from around 1770! ;)
 

I like the counterfeits too. A little more to the story. Thanks everyone for the comments.
 

I agree with both Eric and Hogge. First, it looks like a George II and he died in 1760 so it couldn't be from 1770's or 1780's. It also looks quite crude which leads me to believe counterfeit. It's a little more scarce as a Geo II counterfeit. Any way you look at it, nice find!
 

I agree. Never said 1770's. I was thinking 1737.
 

Actually I did. I take that back.
 

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