2009 Half Soverigns
 

I just bought a half sovereign from eBay and wanted to make sure it was legit. so I measured and weighed,
The weight is 4 grams, the diameter is 19.3 mm, but the thickness is around 1.1 mm
Went to the Royal Mint website and it all checks out except for the thickness (the RM lists that as 0.81 mm).
So either I bought a fake, or the Royal Mint have a serious quality issue?

You can view the specs on the top right of the interactive window
http://www.royalmint.com/store/BritishGold/SVH09.aspx

What do you guys think?

Re: 2009 Half Soverigns
 

Thickness is the hardest thing to measure, to rim or what? I had some fake gold coins once but the thickness was massively off, like double because they were trying to make weight with the diameter dimension correct. Chances are high that you're OK. Fitchs are nice sometimes.

Did you get a proof?

Re: 2009 Half Soverigns
 

29/100th of a mm sounds like a very small variance to me, I'd say that's within an allowable margin, but I'm no expert

Re: 2009 Half Soverigns
 

Yeah it is a proof

I dont think they make a Fitch for halfs

I use a micrometer caliper, it is pretty acurate

Re: 2009 Half Soverigns
 

It's not a matter of caliper accuracy, it's rim variation. Rims vary more than any other part of a coin because all the blank variation ends up there. I just measured the rims on a few SAEs and found rim thickness varying from between 2.96 to 3.18 mm. Admittedly the QC on SAEs is going to be somewhat below proof Sovereigns but the principle is the same.

Main thing is fakes are going to be from something of around 8.5-10 specific gravity Vs gold at 19 and change. It would have to be almost twice as thick to make weight.

Re: 2009 Half Soverigns
 

You know, my problem isn't in that,

It's that the British Royal Mint keeps hyping its the oldest and best mint in the world, but their quality department cant get the dimensions of a proof right on the official website?