Fake Chinese morgan selling for 20 cents USD

I found this and many other fake "silver" coins on TaoBao (China's Amazon-like shopping site) selling for less than 20cents each (1 RMB dollar). Most sellers would state that they are selling fakes or duplicates. By law, it is not required to print "copy" on the coins unlike here in North America.

 

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20 cents too much...

 

Yeah, but sure as heck are going to be a huge problem for this hobby for long in the future.

 

Counterfeit coins have been around for as long as coins have been in existence. Take a look at this article: http://www.coinworld.com/news/california-couple-finds-large-gold-coin-hoard.1.html An 1891S $20 coin was found in the hoard that could be fake. If it turns out to be fake it means it is a contemporary counterfeit. All one needs to be is alert and vigilant when it comes to collecting coins. Counterfeits pose no more of a threat to the hobby than anything else out there such as illegal or unethical smelting or cleaning, etc.

 

There is a huge difference between contemporary counterfeits, which are very collectible in their own right and many times are worth more than the coin they were imitating, and modern forgeries made to fool collectors. My prediction is this huge wave of ever increasing quality fakes from China will start turning massive people away from coin collecting. People who start out and get stuck with fakes are much less likely to continue collecting.

 

Agreed. If buyers with no knowledge of the coin market start hitting Ebay with no idea what they are doing they are going to get stuck with these coins. That's why we have TPG's, not to just give a market acceptable grade but to guarantee authenticity. You get what you pay for when you buy slabbed coins. Buyers of raw coins especially over the internet where you can't even view the coin in hand are the ones who get stuck with the fakes. All in the name of saving a few bucks over the graded coin.

 

Yeah, until the better quality fake slabs come out. They already have pretty good slabs with correct numbers on them, the main way to tell is the ink jet printing versus laser priting of the bar codes. Slabbing will not save you sir, only knowledge.

I still contend coin collecting may become a dead hobby due to these massive flood of fakes.

 

Coin collecting may also become a dead hobby due to the shift to electronic forms of payment. 20-30 years from now the kids will think how quaint and unsanitary passing bills and coins around was. Paypal, bitcoin, debit cards, even paying with you cell phone is the way to conduct business in the future. Coin collecting will slowly die when coins no longer circulate.

 

No it won't. How many public corporations issue stock certificates anymore? That doesn't stop people from collecting them because they like the "quaint" art work on them. We drank the kool aid by flocking to TPGs. All we did was weaken ourselves-like shoveling down antibotics for every sniffle instead of sucking it up and getting stronger.

 

Not just coin collecting, even buying silver and gold...just perhaps.

 

What is their composition? Got a link?

 

Like AliExpress, TaoBao is owned by the Chinese based Alibaba Group, and have sales greater than eBay and Amazon combined. I read somewhere than the quantity of Chinese manufactured "replicas" entering the United States daily exceeds ten thousand pieces.

 

On Taobao, you can easily tell if it is fake, just look at the price, however, higher prices dont gurantee it is real. 6 rmb equals 1 usd.

 

http://s.taobao.com/search?q=%E3y%8...tab=all&promote=0&bcoffset=4&s=280#J_relative

 

Zinc, copper and possibly nickels.

 

I think that the coin would be worth it to my depending on the composition of the coin would not like one at all

 

The "J-man" sells most of his dollar "coins" for $1.90 each with free shipping.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/group/US-Dollars/714825_212090988.html

However, there are many different sellers using 90% silver planchets... these can get somewhat pricey.

 

I don't think it's copper or nickel, an ounce of those cost over 20 cents.

Also I don't think it's a good idea to post all those links here, free advertising for them is not necessary.

 

Some of them look pretty.

 

The "J-man" doesn't need any advertising... he already has thousands of U.S. buyers on his "customer" list left over from his eBay days of years back. Posting links allows us to see the proliferation of this type of "product". With the volume of "coins" coming into the U.S. daily, these Chinese "mints" are already running at capacity.