1796 dollar being auctioned on eBay. Real or Fake?

guanelid · 02-01-2009, 04:59 PM

I had a choice today. I could get swept up by the pre-game hype of the Super Bowl, or I could do some detective work on an intriguing coin in eBay. I flipped a coin, and the coin won. I hope the winning bidder doesn't lose.

With a little over two hours to go in an eBay auction today, only $100 had been bid on a EF 1796 Bust dollar. My interest was piqued. So I looked very closely at the photos. I couldn't see anything wrong with it at first. But the description bothered me.

Here's what the seller had to say: "My wife inherited this from her Great Uncle's Estate many years ago. She found it recently in her old jewelry box. I do not know anything about coins. So i can not say if it is REAL or FAKE. Please look at the pictures and judge for yourself."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. And it seemed to me the lack of bidding meant that many people thought it was fake. I looked more closely at the photos, and compared them with known 1796 dollars on reputable sites. Something looked off. The location of the head didn't seem quite right. The curls on the top of the head lined up with the wrong letters in LIBERTY. I kept clicking on websites and checks my books. I thought the head looked like the one used on the 1795 coin. But I'm just a neophyte, and I'm doing this very quickly, so I could be wrong. I kept looking and reading sites on counterfeit coins.

I found a site that showed a picture of a Chinese counterfeit 1796 dollar. That Chinese counterfeit was easy to spot. http://www.silver-coins.org/1796_dra...st_dollar.html

But even though the eBay auction wasn't offering that known type of Chinese counterfeit. I wasn't satisfied until I found another website that seemed to show the precise type of 1796 with misaligned head that was on eBay. That website called it a counterfeit. That was good enough for me.
http://www.civitasgalleries.com/coun...verdollar.html

But by then, in just a few minutes, the bid had jumped to close to $600. Still way below market.

There is 1 hour 45 minutes to go. The bidding is still open. What should I do? There's no way I would bid on this coin, but am I sure enough to contact the bidders? Probably not. If I were wrong, that would probably just get me sued, and banned from eBay. Should I contact eBay now or later or at all? I don't even know for sure that I'm right about this.

Any thoughts?

Dean Guaneli
(guanelid)

P.S. I'm not going to do anything before the auction ends.

Hobo · 02-01-2009, 05:06 PM

Can you post a link to the auction so we can look at the pics?

guanelid · 02-01-2009, 05:12 PM

cgi.ebay.com/1796-Old-Bust-Dollar_W0QQitemZ230322916454QQihZ013QQcategoryZ119 76QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Auction title: 1796 Old Bust Dollar

Treashunt · 02-01-2009, 05:19 PM

What a waste of $1025!

link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/1796-Old-Bust-Do...1%7C240%3A1318

FreakyGarrettC · 02-01-2009, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Treashunt

What a waste of $1025!

link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/1796-Old-Bust-Dollar_W0QQitemZ230322916454QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCoi ns_US_Individual?hash=item230322916454&_trksid=p32 86.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2%7C65%3A10%7C39%3A1%7C24 0%3A1318

Arhhhh!!!!!!
Oh my god!

Hobo · 02-01-2009, 05:57 PM

$1,075 now.

The eventual buyer would do better to use that money to place a bet on a Roulette wheel at a casino in Vegas. At least at the casino you have some chance (however remote) of winning. This eBay auction is a sure loser.

guanelid · 02-01-2009, 06:08 PM

I forgot to mention that I started off my "investigation" by directly asking the seller if he had any reason to believe that the coin was a fake. I got back a reply very quickly, and the answer might be characterized as evasive.

I asked a compound question: "Do you have any reason to believe that the bust dollar is fake or has been cleaned or otherwise altered?" In other words, I asked him two questions in one. (1) did he have reason to believe it was a fake, and (2) did he have reason to believe the coin had been cleaned.

The answer I received was: "As the listing states i know nothing about coins. It doesn't appear to have been cleaned."

Thus, I got a direct answer to the part of the question about whether it had been cleaned . But you decide if he answered the question about believing the coin was a fake. He said nothing more than what he said in the auction, which was that he claims not to know anything about coins. As he said in the auction, he doesn't know if the coin is real or fake. I think the same thing could be said about his answer to my direct question.

jloring · 02-01-2009, 06:11 PM

Isn't the "real or fake" disclaimer a violation of eBay policy? So many red flags (ID kept private, no return policy, payment within 24 hours) on this one, even a novice bidder should know better.

CoinKeeper · 02-01-2009, 06:28 PM

Oh my! That isn't a good counterfeit either. There are so many differences between the real and fake one. The spacing between the 1 and the hair are off, and so is the spacing between the E in Liberty and the top of the hair!

This needs to be reported!!!

ksparrow · 02-01-2009, 06:28 PM

Seller made a number of purchases from someone known to sell Chinese forgeries a while back- too far back to find out any info except item numbers. Ebay's policy of wiping out the details of previous transaction makes it impossible to find out exactly what scammy sellers have been buying-- another way they support fraud.

CoinKeeper · 02-01-2009, 06:29 PM

It's at $1,470!!!!!!

ksparrow · 02-01-2009, 06:30 PM

The CFe group has been reporting these auctions like mad since yesterday, both as fakes and for authenticity disclaimer violations. No eBay response so far.

CoinKeeper · 02-01-2009, 06:30 PM

$1,625

CoinKeeper · 02-01-2009, 06:35 PM

It ended at $1,825...oh my...

ksparrow · 02-01-2009, 06:41 PM

It is very dismaying that eBay will let these fakes sell despite numerous warnings, but someone who makes a mistake in their auction title has it yanked immediately (referring to another thread).

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