1911 5 rouble on ebay

[coin_collector]

Fellow collectors,

 

wanted to get your perspectives on one item currently listed on ebay.

 

Link to Ebay Item

Pictures

 

I've bought a large number of items via ebay and got burned only once so far.

 

My concerns:

 

1. The reputation of the seller is not very well established.

2. Seller is from a different country. (I am in US)

3. The coin doesn't look like a very good strike. (the lines of face especially seem a little washed out).

 

The combination of the above (especially #3 makes me wonder if this is a counterfeit).

 

Would the experts mind analyzing the images of the coin to see any signs of funny business?

 

Things I noted so far:

1. The 1911 doesn't show any tooling (at least none that I can see), so I don't think it's a 1901 magically getting younger by 10 years.

2. The details on the face are not very clear and seem sort of washy. (It could be just regular wear and tear i guess.)

3. The details of the border around insignia of Moscow seem a bit unclear. (Could also be related to wear).

 

Thanks

[bobh]

Fellow collectors,

 

wanted to get your perspectives on one item currently listed on ebay.

 

For this series, 1910 and 1911 are certainly the rarest years with any mintage numbers of concern (except for 1907 etc.), so it makes sense to be somewhat more "paranoid" about them than other years.

 

Your concern about strike is well founded; coins with low mintage numbers should tend towards better strikes because there were less coins to wear down the dies. But I am sure there are also exceptions to this.

 

As to the location of the seller, I generally tend to stay away from sellers who are in Israel -- there are quite a few very cleverly faked Russian gold (and other) coins coming from there recently (and it doesn't matter that I myself am Jewish, so there is no antisemitism involved here whatsoever...).

 

My advice ... even if this coin might be genuine, I would wait for a better one!