Ms Tutor,
I think your dreaming re: KR's with off metal cores etc. In fact, I'd offer you $50 over spot for a good example just to see what your talking about.. I don't mean some crudely drilled and plugged obvious thing.. I mean a coin that looks and feels like a real KR. Would have to be the correct size and fairly close to correct weight.
I've bought and sold 100/1000's of KR,ML,GE over the last 35 years of being in the coin business and deal with many of the majors.. PMI, Dillon Gage, Engle, Barry P. in Oregon, Jack Hunt in the old Days Joel Coen in NY. etc. and have never, that I can remember, been asked to verify the authenticity of these bullion coins. KR have been out of favor since the Aparthied(sp) boycott as well as the coming of the ML and Eagle.. At times there is a tiny difference in whether ML are .999 or .9999 and ML have a tendency to scratch a bit due to their being a bit soft.. thus sometimes market makers will pass or offer say $5 less for lightly scratched. The little differences in premium are simply supply and demand.. and that is based a lot on popularity. When the public isn't buying gold coins.. as has been pretty much the case since the Y2K BS.. KR have been available at melt or a tad less.. ML and GE have been about the same at as low as around $5 over. Most other odd bullion coins fall into that same boat.. very low prices and wider spreads. It just doesn't pay to inventory the coins that don't sell.. Interest expense you know.
Since the terrorist attack however, there has been a bit of a shortage of physical gold coins for delivery and the premiums had gone back up to about normal with a main reason being that for physical coins the distributor types had to turn to the mint to restock with current dated coins at the mint's higher premium. But in the last week that shortage seems to be changing and premiums are already going down.
Sorry to be soo long winded.. But did want to make a point re: your "counterfeit" KR statement.
Fritz
p.s. There have been however some 100oz silver bars around that have been drilled and plugged.. a few dealers would want to saw them in half or keep serial #'s in case they turned out to be the altered kind.. But seems no one cares about them these days either..
Would still pay a premium for a sample of one of those altered KR your talking about... Would even extend the offer to include a ML and Gold Eagle if you believe they alter/plug them too.
Smiles,
Fritz |
