40 para narrow or wide rim?

Hi All, due to the very different value of the two kinds (and my interest it well classifying the coins in my collection) I would like to understand if this coin is KM248,1 or KM 248,2. 

No need to add weight and diameter the coin is good, but I cannot be sure which is the correct kind as we haven't both pictures in Numista and in WC. In my opinion, looking at World Coins picture (look down) my coin should be wide rim but I would really appreciate your opinions because the coin is not in excellent grade and I could be mistaken.

Thanks for your help!

I think it’s the wide rim

Thank you. Any other opinion? 

From NGC

Wide rim

I have made the following documentation based on the images from those big “houses”, but I have not seen any real diffrences in the rims:

Comments, please?

When I compare the images on the Numista page I don't see a big difference. It looks like to me yours has denticles so KM#248.2 but with the wear I'm not certain.

+1

On graphic it should be KM# not Y#.  

SCWC says for KM# 248.1 - Narrow rim with beaded border. For KM#248.2 - Wide rim with dentilated border.  I would think the long teeth would be the dentilated border and the short teeth more like a beaded border? And I assume that only applies to the reverse side? 

In the Short teeth box you have 248.1 instead of 248.2.

To be honest, I think it's a big stretch that these are different varieties. You might be able to see a difference on UNC coins but on a worn coin?

Darioelle

Thank you. Any other opinion? 

Beaded border on reverse, so narrow rim. See the documentation.

According to SCWC

Even on a well used coin, like the OPs, you can see the beads ?

I still think it's a stretch that you can really tell which is which especially on a worn coin. Just the fact you've switched the coins around kind of proves that.  I have several comments on the latest graphic.

No, you can see the length on the OPs coin. The yellow box has to disappear, once we agree on the rest.

Looks good but we've now used the km#248.1 picture from NGC and called it km#248.2. Maybe they're actually talking about the obverse side and not the reverse side? Very confusing!

To be honest the image of World Coins I put in my first message doesn't fit very much with the picture for KM248,1 we are about to use in comments section. In the first case the rim looks actually narrow (maybe part of the rim was cut when taking the picture?), and my coin should be considered a “wide rim one” (it is quite similar to Katz Auction's one).

AND if we decide to use the 2 pictures adopted by Sjoelund, I think that, as regards the criteria to distinguish the two kinds, we shouldn't talk anymore about “wide” or “narrow” rim, as they look the same, but just long or short teeth on the reverse. 

BUT If we agree on this criterium how should we consider the following picture used in Numista page? The obverse teeth are long in this case. So what 🤔? 

I'm all for saying they're indistinguishable. We can't ever determine which side to look at. This picture indicates for km248.1 the obverse and reverse are different and the beaded border is only on the obverse.

This picture indicates for km248.2 both sides are the same.

Does that hold true for all? 

Ole - can you ask your SCWC contact?

1. Contact to KM no longer available.

2. I don't believe in the NGC's, nor the Drouot's classification of the coins, so I really believe we only use the one done by SCWC and FORGET the widths of the rims, since they don't differ!

I meant Paul Baker.

This is what SCWC says and also is on the Numista page:

KM#248.1 Narrow rim with beaded border
KM#248.2 Wide rim with dentilated border

Very confused in the end on how attributing my coin…😭😭😭

Darioelle

Very confused in the end on how attributing my coin…😭😭😭

Beads on your coin's reverse, which defines your coin perfectly well. KM248.1!

I'll use this for the change request

Comments?

I think that's as good as it gets.  

Sjoelund

I'll use this for the change request

 

Comments?

I think that it's a nice job, but maybe we should include in the “wide rim” definition also the obverse one shown in the main picture of the page? I mean that is it possible that KM 848,2 includes both obverse and reverse wide rims? 

When you can't see the width difference, it doesn't serve anything.

I have just included “narrow” and “thin” rim to make the historic clear, but the expressions are definitely wrong.

yes but one could think that KM248,2 includes only dentilated border on reverse, while it maybe includes also dentilated border on obverse according to that picture, or am I wrong? 

It would be very helpful if other coin's owners would share their pictures and experiences.

You are wrong, the 248.2 obverse is beaded.

Hello sorry for joining the discussion a bit late. While trying to highlight the differences between lines, I reviewed the past sales of specimens already listed in Numista and assigned each sale to its respective line according to sale information. However, I believe that some of the designations used in the sales are incorrect for certain specimens.

This becomes evident when you compare the specimens of the same line. 

For example both these pictures are assigned to 248.1 ( According to the sale), yet clearly there is a difference in the rim size with beaded border in both, what do you think ?

Hi Dr_teek, your pictures would bring me back to the starting point of my question: the size of the rim. Then the point of the discussion turned to the beaded or dentilated border… I hoped it was easier to get an idea of the kind of my coin, but if the whole discussion can let us have a better definition of both sides it would be great in the end. 

Dr_Teek

Hello sorry for joining the discussion a bit late. While trying to highlight the differences between lines, I reviewed the past sales of specimens already listed in Numista and assigned each sale to its respective line according to sale information. However, I believe that some of the designations used in the sales are incorrect for certain specimens.

 

This becomes evident when you compare the specimens of the same line. 

For example both these pictures are assigned to 248.1 ( According to the sale), yet clearly there is a difference in the rim size with beaded border in both, what do you think ?

And that is the entire source of the confusion.  SCWC states that wide rim = dentilated border and beaded border has narrow rim. Here we have both rim sizes and beaded border. Maybe there should have been a 248.3?  Anyway, I don't think there will ever be an easy way to distinguish .1 from .2 because of the many examples that don't fit either variety.

I have cancelled my CR, it was possible since not treated yet!

Anyone with a good idea how to do another one, I haven't!

I do not. I think SCWC's classifications are flawed from the beginning and any attempt to visually characterize each will have enough exceptions to be confusing.

We need to add all this to the comments section of the coin, maybe the link to this thread will be enough. We need an English writer to do that. Who volunteers?

I'll take a shot at it and post here if @Dr_Teek  agrees.

@rsirian1 go ahead of course, thank you so much 

I've contacted Mr. Paul Baker, when I get an answer, I'll tell you.

Here is the answer from Paul:

Ole,

 Thanks for your message. I had previously read the topic a bit. The coin is older than I collect and so I was not quite as interested as I would otherwise have been.

Anyway, as with other “problems” like this, part of the answer is in what the “older” SCWC books said for KM-248.

In SCWC1996 23^rd Edition (the last edition with 1801 to date), for KM-248 there is no KM-248.1 and KM-248.2, there is just KM-248 but notably, after the date line (with pricing) there is the following note about KM-248:-

“NOTE: Exists w/large or small toughra.”

So I searched for “40 PARA 1277 KM-248 LARGE TOUGHRA” and the fourth result pointed to some of the lots listings of an auction and on that page I searched for “248” and I followed the link to this lot…

https://www.numisbids.com/sale/7337/lot/7626

From there I got to the large version of the image – that image is attached.

There are other slight things but on the side with the toughra there are 3 features of interest…

1. The three parallel lines to the upper part of the toughra – on the “large toughra” variety these are wider as a group of lines
2. The group of three dots below the line that is below the Arabic “40” – on the “large toughra” variety these are closer to the rim, because the whole toughra is a little larger
3. The line of the toughra that gets close to the upper part of the Arabic “4” of “40” – on the “large toughra” variety less of that line is behind the upper stroke on the Arabic “4”.

We can only assume that the upper 2 images are the two sides of the small toughra variety and therefore the lower 2 images are the two sides of the large toughra variety.

We can see that the small toughra variety has narrow rims and that the large toughra variety has slightly wider rims.

Someone (SCWC or perhaps from a contributor) must have decided to use different features to distinguish these two varieties.

Small and large toughra are not easy to tell without a pair of images.

However narrow and wide rims are not too obvious either.

Perhaps existing agreements with “Heritage Auctions” mean that you can use the auction lot images.

Perhaps there will be some other images on the internet for this pair, I have not looked any further.

This could well be all that we need to know for this.

rsirian1, good luck with the syntheses of what we now know….

Wow, that looks very helpful!

At this point I'd say that my kind is “small toughra” KM248,1. 

For the future generations of collectors I'd suggest to use (if possible) the picture with both kinds side by side and put some arrows indicating the main differences.

Thank you Paul and thanks all those who contributed to make a step forward in Numista catalog 👍

Thanks Ole and Paul.

Large/small toughra makes more sense to me. The problem I see is that once SCWC went from that to narrow/wide rim and border type it became very confusing when people were trying to use the rims/borders rather than the toughras (as is obvious from this entire post).  As an example the following are NGC graded coins, one narrow rim and one wide rim. As can be seen, the toughras are identical as well as the 3 dots.

I propose Numista keeps the SCWC comment about rims/boarders but state that it may be an erroneous description and the true variation is the toughra size.

The questions are:

1. Do we keep the 248.1 and 248.2 designations

2. Are we sure 248.1 = small toughra?

 3. What do we do with the one past sales that's a Proof? It clearly is a large toughra so isn't a 248.1. Change the year line comment to KM#248.2; Proof? Note that the Proof year line was there when the coin page was only KM# 248.

As an aside, I looked at the past history of this page. In 2016 there was only KM# 248 (regular and proof), no varieties.  Everyone that entered this coin entered it on the year lines that became KM# 248.1 regardless of toughra size.  By 2020 there were both varieties, 90% having KM# 248.1 and 10% KM# 248.2.  That 90/10 split is most likely not accurate although the values in SCWC indicate KM# 248.1 coins are more plentiful (lower value).

Dr_Teek

 However, I believe that some of the designations used in the sales are incorrect for certain specimens.

 

This becomes evident when you compare the specimens of the same line. 

For example both these pictures are assigned to 248.1 ( According to the sale), yet clearly there is a difference in the rim size with beaded border in both, what do you think ?

Good examples. The top picture is from a large toughra (248.2/wide/dentilated) and the bottom picture is from a small toughra (248.1/narrow/beaded). I've looked through all the examples on the coin page and toughra size is much easier to identify than rim size or beads.

Proposed CR. Comments welcomed.

SCWC differentiates between the two varieties of the coin as follows:

KM#248.1 Narrow rim with beaded border
KM#248.2 Wide rim with dentilated border

However it is very hard to tell the difference based on rim width and border type especially on worn coins.  Previous versions of SCWC did not have two varieties but stated as a comment, “NOTE: Exists with large or small Toughra.”  Using Toughra size to differentiate between the two types is much easier as shown below.  For a more detailed discussion of this see forum post:  https://en.numista.com/forum/topic167815.html

Thank you @Sjoelund (Ole) and Paul , for the wonderful information, 

And thank you @rsirian1 for the proposed comment, I think it describes the issue perfectly. 

Perfect, seen from my side. Would it be possible to give the lengths (yellow & blue) in mm? Because with one coin in front of you it's difficult to judge small or large!

Please use two different colors, the red is difficult to see on brown???? Red you already used for “same size”

Otherwise, fantastic.

To me it's now ideal.

Thanks. CR submitted.