Espana Correos ??

Quote:
Quote from my essay on Replicas:

"... That aside take a look at one of the typical misrepresentations in this matter: the claimed value (or increase thereof) based on gold content. This part is mostly just nicely-worded marketing blah-blah, for example "Gold stamp replicas are a form of medal or medallion and they can be an interesting way to invest in gold at the same time as acquiring historical, artistic, or antique artefacts.". Sounds nice? Well, nothing but ****. From the technical point of view more or less 'real' gold of a certain quality (mostly 18k up to 24k even if some manufacturers merely use 6k as normal folks can't check anyway) is evaporated and steamed onto a carrier (e.g. tin foil). The resulting coating however is so incredibly thin (think molecular strength) that it's useless when it comes to measurable gold content. With other words you would need literally tons of these replicas to receive a gold amount worth looking at (still less than a gold filling, mind). However the effort for extracting the gold would be astronomically high and one can easily say that old Greek Sysiphus had an easier job. You can get much more real gold much easier and much cheaper by either simply getting a batch of real 22k+ gold leaf needed for gilding and decorating (usually 1/7000th of a millimeter thin but still much thicker than any steamed replica), getting yourself a gold filling or visiting your bank and buying a Krueger or two. Ergo: there is no value based on a claimed gold content of these replicas. Note that in fact a few recent examples were actually found to not contain real gold but merely oxy-stabilized high-shine bronze paint, the same chemical muck that modern time Chinese forgers use for their reproductions..."