Expert: Dan Moore - 12/9/2011

Question
The 1976 Statue of Liberty Medals were minted in silver, bronze, and gold-plate. I have purchased more than one supposedly gold-plated medals from ebay that appear identical in finish to similar bronze medals from the bicentennial series, and they also fail an acid test.

Is the finish of the gold plated medal obviously different from the bronze version of the medal? Are there any differences in the COA, box, coin weight or other coin features between the bronze and gold-plated coins?

Answer
Hi Roy,

I see this situation on eBay all the time -- almost every dealer selling "gold plated" National Bicentennial Medals has no clue that he does not have the much rarer gold plated one, but rather the much more common brass one.  But it sounds better to say he has the gold plated one, so that's what he calls it.  And they almost always get away with it, because the medals are sealed in those plastic capsules, and nobody's gonna break the capsule apart to test it right?  Usually the pictures are not good enough to tell the difference either.

Unfortunately, telling them apart is difficult.  They are the same size, they weigh the same, and neither the COA or any of the packaging is any different between the two.  Prettymuch the only way to tell them apart is to hold one of each side-by-side.  Then the difference becomes obvious.  The gold plated one has a much more mirror-like surface -- not quite like a mirrored proof coin, but much moreso than the brass one.

I have attached a picture of the three different medals, so you can hopefully see the difference.

You can see more pictures on my web page here :

http://www.workingmancoins.com/ForSale/BicMed.htm

I hope this helps,

Dan