A fellow walked into a high-end coin shop recently with a $10 early gold coin, a 1799 $10. Process was as follows: Clerk examines the coin, says it is the large stars obverse variety. It has "problems" which causes the clerk to say it was probably in jewelry. The customer says that it was in the family for years, passed down by the grandfather. Finally the clerk brings it back from an examination by the expert who says it was not genuine, and they would pay behind spot for it. I did not have a chance to look at the coin, most stores get upset if another customer says something about an ongoing transaction. Are counterfeits of gold coins like this fairly common? 50 or more years ago decent examples of early gold coins were not worth huge premiums, so the incentive to counterfeit was minimal.
People seem to get hung up on the idea that only rare or very valuable coins are counterfeited. Nothing could be further from the truth. The most commonly counterfeited coins are the ones that cost the least amount of money. Even common, everyday cents are counterfeited. There are 2 reasons to counterfeit coins. 1 - to pass them off as money. 2 - to sell them to collectors or dealers. In the old days, the first reason was the most common. Back then it was almost the only reason. It is only in more recent years that counterfeits were made for sale to collectors. And what most don't realize is that the common coins, the cheap coins, are the ones most often counterfeited for sale to collectors. There is a reason for that. Think about it, when was the last time you ever saw a clerk at a store mark a $5 or $10 bill with one of those marking pens to see if it was a fake bill ? I'll wager you've never seen it. The reason it doesn't happen is because people automatically think it wouldn't be worth it to try and pass fake 5's and 10's. But that right there is exactly why it is worth it - because you'll never get caught ! That makes the low denomination bills, just like the common cheap coins, the best ones to counterfeit ! Nobody ever thinks twice about them !
Good point. And Treasury probably will not be screwing with redesigns of the $1 bill, thank God! What no shop is going to tell a customer is that contemporary or old counterfeits can be worth big premiums. Also, there is the temptation for a shop to say that an early $10 gold coin is fake when it may be real, in which case it could well be worth $5000. I'm not insinuating that, not seeing the coin, but the temptation is there.
I am some old english coin that is a counterfeit. Its a very well known counterfeit its known exactly who made made them and when he made them. Their silver content is the exact same as is the weight. Its really more of a replica tbh. But yes this coin was made in something like 1915 and the original was like 1780ish. Id have to go look it up again for exact dates, but the point is yes replicas and counterfeits that are still gold/silver are made and were made even way back.
My friend who wheels and deals in coins ran across two Spanish 2 reales. One looked to have a golden hue to it. He just thought someone plated it or it toned in a strange color. I did some research and come to find it out it was a contemporary counterfeit, made of brass. Some of your old counterfeits have a little value to them. A 1790s brass spanish 2 reales sold for $60-$150 at stacks.
From the beginning of time gold has always been a precious metal, so counterfeits have always been produced. Just one example - the racketeer nickels of the 1880s.
I have paid over $100 for contemporary counterfeit Conder halfpenny tokens. Machins Mills produced counterfeit British half pennies and those can cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
I too have a coin that is made out of a golden metal (might be brass not sure) Its a 1932-S washington quarter. Besides it being the wrong color it just dos not feel right in hand and weighs a half gram off, however lookwise its pretty accurate. Never bothered to try and sell it (i got it for free) but id imagine someone would probably at least pay 20 bucks for it.
The rarest of the half cents, the 1796) has been counterfeited for more than a century. Some of them are considered collectables in their own right. One of the most heralded counterfeits is the "Dr Edwards" copy of the 1796 half cent http://images.goldbergauctions.com/php/lot_auc.php?site=1&sale=65&lot=159. Since even an AG-3 1796 starts out at $15,000, you can see the temptation. However, since they are so expensive, any 1796 half cent is scrutinized very carefully to verify its authenticity. It is not unknown for serious collectors of early american copper (pre-1857) coins to have (clearly identified) electrotypes in their collections.
What about the strawberry leaf large cents? Those are most likely either samples made or contemporary counterfeits last I heard.
No the strawberries are genuine mint products. They have been punch linked to other varieties and the edge dies used are also identical to those used on other wreath cents. Oddly stylistically they seem to fit better between S-4 and S-5, but I believe the edge die was not used until S-8 or S-9. I'd have to review the information. OK I double checked the information. By obv style the Strawberries should come between S-4 the last of the Chain cents and the first of the wreath cents. The edge dies were the same as those used on S-5,6,7, 10, and 11. So that would fit with the strawberries coming before S-5. S-8 and S-9 however have the same edge dies as the chain cents. That would mean they came before the Strawberries. To add to the confusion the reverse style of the strawberries is closer to that of S-8,9, 10 and 11. Frankly trying to figure out the emission sequence of the 1793 wreaths makes no sense unless there was more than one press in operation at the same time.
