There are three things that make old coins worthy collectibles:

- History
- Artistry
- Precious metal

Some coin artwork is truly beautiful, and sometimes people enhance it with color. Crown-sized coins, bigger than 30 mm diameter, are often selected by artists for colorization. Much of the time pins, brooches, and bevels are affixed to the colored coins to make jewelry.

Most coin collectors, fussy purists that they are, shun painted coins and consider them damaged goods as far as their collections go. The markets for painted coins are therefore the jewelry and novelty market. The underlying collector value of the coin is canceled by the colorization.

The coins in our picture come from Goldberg Coins and Collectibles, where they sold at auction in the range of $75 to $200 US dollars. These are typical retail values for such pieces. Wholesale values would be about one-half retail.

CoinQuest thanks Goldbergs for use of their coin photos. They are beauties!

You can see a colorized US coin at this CoinQuest link.