I have noticed that there have been a couple of people asking about the 1909 S V.B.D cents recently. As this is something I have been trying to educate myself on I thought I would share a couple of the simplest ways to identify the most common fakes. Below I will show a Fake example with a real 1909 S V.D.B below it. #1 look at the mint mark Fake Real #2 look at the reverse of the coin a real 1909 S V.D.B will have a shallow N Fake Real # 3 On the revers of A real 1909 S V.D.B the dot in between the D and the B will be in the center and not to one side. Fake Real If you have any more tricks pleas share . Hope this helped someone. Edit I will try to add the contributions from this thread to the original post as they come . Mint Mark Positions thanks to rlm's cents
The die chip. Here is another picture you need for this thread. It shows the 4 positions of the mintmark.
Fake 1909-S VDB: How to distinguish this particular fake from an authentic coin: Red - The "E" and "R" are completely different than that of an authentic coin. The width of the lines of the "E" should be consistent and sharp. The tail of the "R" should not hook downwards - it should flow to the right. Green - The tips of the wheat stalks should be pointed - not cut off. Blue - The tops of the "N"s should not be rounded upwards - they should be flat. Yellow - The right side of the "V" should be wide at the top and gradually thin towards the point, at the bottom. The middle line of the "B" should be angled upwards - never straight across. Also, the initials "V.D.B." should be slightly off-center, favoring the left wheat stem. The dot between "D" and "B" will be exactly centered to the left and right wheat stem (and like blue_oxen stated, that dot should be half-way between the "D" and "B", not favoring either one of them).
Here is another trick that might help. Crop the 4 photos above showing the mintmark locations squarely around the date and mintmark. Set the width and maintain ratio of all 4 photos to a standard length. Then whenever you want to verify a 1909-s VDB 1. Using a flatbed scanner - scan the cent to be verified 2. Squarely crop the date and mintmark of the scan 3. Set the cropped image to the standard width and maintain ration. 4. Overlay scanned image with the 4 from above. You can also do the same thing with the V.D.B. on the reverse.
Here is a fake being sold on eBay recently. Notice the serif on the 1 in the date. The shape of the nines is also wrong.
nss: uh, if it makes you feel better: No. However, why spend that kind of money on a chance. Slabbed is better.
No, but there are more fakes than there are real ones. And none of the fakes are slabbed and a whole dang lot of the real ones are slabbed. So what does that tell ya about the percentage of the raw ones out there are fakes ?
Well, neither sentence tells me anything about the percentage of raw 1909-S VDBs that are fake. You say there are more fakes than real. If you meant more raw coins are fake than real, I guess that translates to 51% or more. The fact that "none of the fakes are slabbed" makes me think you are saying all slabbed coins on eBay are genuine. "A whole dang lot of the real ones are slabbed" sort of lost me.
I am saying that more fake 1090-S VDB cents exist than real ones period- whether slabbd or raw. Most of the surviving examples of genuine coins are slabbed. Even most of the genuine examples that are problem coins are slabbed. So, now you have all of the fake ones being raw - since no fakes are slabbed. And the few remaining genuine examples that raw. That means that among the raw coins- the fakes outnumber the genuine coins by 3 or 4 to 1.