Question about Daniel Carr offerings

You do realize that by bringing the Gallery Mint into this, you may have set a "trap" for someone other than the intended, right? A certain someone here seems to agree that their dies are "illegal", and I can only assume isn't something he wishes to revisit.

 

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Try Google. Alibaba has several counterfeiters among its vendors. Maybe it can direct you to the Chinese version of Dan Carr. My Chinese sucks.

 

Now, it is becoming fun. Intent to defraud is not required under the statute. Intent to make the die in the likeness or similitude is important consistent with the 19th century due process case law or else the prospective defendant would have an as applied challenge. One doesn't accidentally make a counterfeit (i.e. unauthorized copy).

 

Good point. Carr did makes those statements in a PCGS thread if I recall correctly.

 

And I think that's the very key point. The law is aimed at protecting the money supply. It has little or nothing to do with protecting people who are obsessed or demented enough to pay hundreds of times face value for a simple coin. To protect those citizens ("from themselves"?), we have the HPA.

 

I don't understand at all. If it's illegal to make a die in the likeness or similitude, where does "intent" come in? They made the die. They then stamped it "copy", but that doesn't alter the fact that they made the die, which is what the statute explicitly outlaws.

 

When we have discussed intent so far in this thread, we have been discussing intent to defraud. There is no intent to defraud in the statutes (save for the fraudulent alteration statute). When interpreting criminal statutes, with few exceptions, there must an intent that you actually intended to accomplish the act in the statute. If you are in the process of making a die and intend to include copy as part of the finished product, then I do not think you can be convicted under the statute. The statute requires production in resemblance or similitude and case law has interpreted this similarity to be substantial enough to fool a person of ordinary skill/knowledge. An ordinary person would not be fooled by a die marked "COPY," and thus, there was no intent to produce a die with the requisite level of similarity under the statute. Does that make sense?

 

Insider, it says TOKEN on it. He takes that off he's pushing it.

 

Augustus St. Lee.

 

Yet, the counterfeiting statute 18 U.S.C. 485 (coins greater than five cents) has been interpreted to apply to coins of historic and numismatic value even if not current coins of the United States. See United States v. Yeatts, 639 F.2d 1186 (5th Cir. 1981).

 

He is asking specifically about the obverse die, which compares favorably to a Buffalo nickel except for the date. From an academic discussion perspective, the hypotheticals raised in this thread are very good questions subject to case specific decisional law.

 

My search shows nothing, do you have a link?

 

Are you seriously asking for help in finding a high quality Chinese counterfeit?

 

OMG

 

They'd have to give it a pass or they couldn't exempt coins that say COPY on one side.

 

I agree because prosecuting someone who complied with the FTC rules promulgated under the HPA and marked only one die would violate the Due Process Clause as applied to that defendant. It says nothing about others who do not comply with the HPA. Even if portions of 16 C.F.R. 304.6 have invalid applications to others, someone who doesn't comply with either doesn't have standing to challenge it. The FTC also couldn't reasonably claim that the counterfeiting statutes only apply to current money of the U.S. without running into conflicts with the way federal appeals courts have interpreted the Title 18 statutes. Those decisions are sound and historic coins remain legal tender of the U.S. and can be circulated as legal tender under the Coinage Act of 1965.

 

Yes, I agree, these cases are necessarily fact-intensive. In that particular case we'd let that die alone because it's being used in combination with another die to make lawful reproductions.

 

Counterfeit is the wrong word, but it has been suggested to me that a similar overstrike to Mr Carr's
Morgans can be found online from Chinese vendors. I certainly would like to see their website and look at their offerings. I am not interested in a cheap Chinese fake panda or anything like that.

 

No, although it did take me a good bit longer to decide that it didn't. It seems like you're inferring further limitations around the intent of the statute than are actually present in its language, which is kind of the same thing that the rest of us are doing.

In the case we're discussing, I am producing a die not marked COPY, which is against the law. But then -- eventually? -- I stamp the die (or only its mate?) COPY, at which point it no longer violates the law, but this does not change the fact that I violated the law. The law doesn't say "you can't make such a die and use it to strike coins", it says "you can't make it, or possess it, or use it". It also doesn't say "you can make it as long as you quickly enough stamp it COPY to eliminate the similitude." It seems a bit like saying "it's okay to punch it up to 120 on the freeway, as long as you intend to slow back down."

Pulling back to the broader perspective, sure, I can imagine that some of the folks involved in writing these laws might have intended them exactly the way you're interpreting them. But, non-lawyer that I am, I can't convince myself that that's the only possible interpretation. In fact, @dcarr's continued un-prosecuted success strongly suggests that others in a position to prosecute don't interpret them that way. It doesn't prove that, of course -- he may indeed be on borrowed time -- but it's suggestive.

 

I suppose it wouldn't be sporting to point out what happens if you, say, accept a payment of $100 in those legal tender coins instead of $1200 in paper money, and then try to declare $100 as your income for tax purposes.