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How to Make Certain That Gold Coins Are the Correct Size & Weight

Counterfeiting is a major problem in the world of gold coin collecting. The great value of real gold coins drives unscrupulous individuals to create gold coin replicas that they sell to unsuspecting coin collectors as the real deal. Nothing is worse than spending hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars on a coin to complete your collection and ultimately finding out that it is a fake. Fortunately, most counterfeit gold coins can be found out via their weight and size.

Things You'll Need

Scale calibrated to hundredths of a gram
Caliper
Coin collector's price guide with information on size and weight of gold coins

Instructions

- 1
  Purchase a coin price guide with detailed information on the size and weight of the style of gold coins that you collect. These guides can be bought at most hobby stores, book stores and coin stores, and they often cost less than $15.
- 2
  Look up the weight, diameter and thickness of the coins that you wish to measure. Write this information on a separate sheet of paper for ease of use.
- 3
  Weigh the coins one by one. If a coin weighs a tenth of a gram or so light or heavy, it is probably a fake, unless there is obviously extreme wear on the face of the coin, in which case you may simply choose to bite the coin to see if it is real gold. Weight is the easiest way to tell that a coin is counterfeit.
- 4
  Use a caliper to accurately measure the diameter and the thickness of the coins. If these measurements are off by even a millimeter, the coin is probably fake.

Coin Collecting