You are very wrong. What I am about to show is pictures of fake coins you can buy today, on a website I will not mention. None of these coins bear a copy stamp. Some of them are pretty crude, but a few would fool a 1st timer.
looks like the website you pulled those images off of all say the coins are copies. There is no lie about selling them as originals, from what I can see..... So, is the point to simply educate that there are copies of all sorts of coins out there, or to warn people away from the sellers who sell them????? http://nl.aliexpress.com/store/category/crafts/114865_200003336.html
Well, yes, the buyer needs to be educated about the coins they buy. Which is why reading and learning about the coins you collect is really important. It can help you understand what a real coin of that type is like and what to look for to authenticate it. And if you are not well versed, you can probably expect to be taken at some point if you don't do your homework.
The reason for posting this is I like to routinely remind people how many fakes exist. It's not like they fake a few rare coins like the 09-S VDB cent, or the 55 DD penny. The fake everything imaginable. Even non-key-date morgans. Heck, they even fake presidential dollars. You can buy them for 20 cents each. Heck, even buying a slabbed coin means nothing anymore, they fake the coin and put it in a fake slab.
Why don't you buy about $200 worth of fake dollars ($1000 face?) and take them to your bank, Tim? Also, I'm pretty sure the "COPY" stamp is a US law affecting US coins.
Yeah. Nowadays fakes are making coins that look so similar to the real thing that you have to be an expert of that coin to tell the fake from the original.
The first part sure is right - the COPY stamp thing is not a regulation that applies worldwide. It merely affects coins offered/sold in the US, and a seller in another country should comply with the laws that apply in his/her country. But I think that, in the US, copies of non-US coins have to be marked this way too. Christian
Everything has been faked at one time or another, even the most common date coins in all denominations. You have to remember that the primary reason to fake coins is not to fool collectors, but so they can be passed in circulation as real money.
I agree that modern coins would be faked to pass as real money. Nothing like 'making your own' (btw, I don't make my own or promote that). There will always be an element in society that thinks they are smarter than everyone else and that it would be easy enough to pass it out. And when coins aren't used as much as they were, like in today's society, then those sorts of persons will be looking to forge/fake other forms of money, like cc's, gift cards, blah blah blah or to fool investors. The biggest problem with faking money (coins) to pass as current money is that it is fairly small change, and it's getting harder for people to pass lots of the money in..... unless they can fool the change counting machines and don't mind giving up the 9 or 10 percent of the 'value'. That or laundering it through some business as quarters or something could work, but again, to me, those place people in a particular place, so that if it caught, it would work against them. I think perhaps collectors get caught up in this not because collectors buy the copies like you've posted, but because the makers of them know that there will be a certain element that will buy them, and then 'innocently' pass them off to someone who doesn't know enough to not buy them (like a coin seller who is not someone who collects it, or a pawn shop or off something) to make a small amount of money, and they get into the collectors areas. I can't see that there are enough 'collectors' who want to put these fakes into their own collections.
I can't see that there are enough 'collectors' who want to put these fakes into their own collections. There is one good thing about fakes. By that I mean the "legal" fakes that have the copy stamp. A lot of people use them for filling the key dates on albums.
Yes it's true. I saw many of world coin fakes. Most of them were produced in China. A part of these fakes were very bad quality; but a part of fakes were very high quality. It seems that Chinese manufacturers of counterfeit coins start creating problems to honest numismatists.
Once again, replicas without the English COPY mark may well be perfectly legal. It just depends on what country you are referring to. (After all, you posted this topic in "World & Ancient Coins" ...) But I agree, copies can be fillers. Usually I don't do that, but I did keep a replica piece that I bought quite a long time ago. Simply because I know I will never own the original. Christian
Yeah. I actually encourage people to buy the copy-stamped "reproductions" and use them in sets instead of shelling out somewhere along 7 digits for the real ones.
Great Britain has been plagued for years with counterfeit 1 Pound coins. It was so bad at one point that the commoners simply gave up and just accepted them. GB still has a problem and is putting out communication to help solve it. http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit-one-pound-coins http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...lood-Britain-1-5million-fake-pound-coins.html