How do graders spot counterfeits?

Oh, I believe that; I just plain ran out of answers. My answer tank is on empty. Ich habe doch gar keine Ahnung. Alles ist kaput. Sorry, temporarily reverted to my mother tongue; I sometimes take refuge there when I run out of English words to use.
Oh, and by the way, "uncle" is simply an old slang way of saying "I give up."

 

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Thank you, Lemme. And while we're being open, I'm not quite sure what the smiley thing meant anyway, so it seems we were in somewhat of the same boat.

 

This thread is interesting. All this time I thought you told a counterfeit by the word COPY stamped on it.

 

It's all in good fun anyway; I mean, besides the seriousness of maintaining our collections!

 

No, no, no...it always says !FAKE! in really big red letters!

 

So if I can't trust my own Government to buy say ASE Bullion Coins from, then how/when/where can I be 100% TOTALLY SURE that I am buying real silver? I would hate for my Children and Grandchildren to someday find that "What I thought" was 100% FOR SURE Silver I left them turned out to be counterfeit coins.

 

You read that wrong. He was talking about foreign governments counterfeiting another countries.

 

If you buy silver eagles, gold coins or platinum coins from our mint personally they are genuine, full weight and measure. If you buy those items from the aftermarket they may not be what you think they are. Chinese counterfeiters have begun to fake slabs too to fool incautious buyers. You could buy directly from Canada mint, English mint or South African mint with no worries. Be cautious in the aftermarket for everything that you buy. Don't assume that your friendly dealer can advise you. Every week there are reports of dealers who were cheated buying fake coins and bars. If they can't spot them over the counter you won't be able to either. The deals are out in the wild but the traps are there too. It's up to you whether the risk is worth the "savings" because every time you get it wrong you lose everything.

 

For the US mint only the collector versions can be bought directly from the mint. Anything they deem bullion is sold through their distributors and the mint will not sell those directly to the public.

That's not anything new, that's been around a while. Theirs are easy to spot and concentrate on the older versions almost exclusively.

 

I don't know, this is just a bit of a crazy idea, but maybe collecting for its own sake without worrying about who's eventually getting what and what they will be inheriting will be worth might help to ease our minds a bit. Living for today, enjoying what we have, endorsing the notion of carpe diem and all that. Life, I dare say, is given to us for the living of it and isn't really meant to be occupied with the immense distraction that the widespread fixation on the accumulation of wealth for whatever post-earthly-existence purposes we want to imagine saddles us with. After all is said and done, we aren't the obsessive Pharaohs of ancient times who were so overly consumed both with preparing their tombs for a guaranteed-wealthy passage to the next life and making arrangements as to who would rule their kingdom after they were gone. Just thinking.

 

Now THIS is really intelligent, very sound, and thoroughly reasonable advice; I would highly recommend taking notice and heed of it.

 

Nothing wrong with sticking to collector versions from the Mint. After all, the whole concept of "bullion" is designed and produced with the idea of making only one very specific type of individual rich...whoever you BUY it from.

 

Nothing wrong with that if that's what someone is looking for. They just don't have a choice with the others

 

That is in fact the case, true, but they DO have the option NOT to buy those others. I might just contend that when all is said and done (and inevitably at some point it is), stacking as such is after all neither collecting nor is it investing, but it is instead a form of hoarding, and almost by definition when it comes to the act and/or process of hoarding the attendant pitfalls of misfortune and errors of judgment have a way of lurking right around the corner.

 

You've touched here on something that most people interested in accumulating PMs would rather not even think about, especially since accepting the reality of what you describe as a distinct possibility is too difficult for many to be able to handle. As long as everyone continues to la dee da along blindly content with the status quo and no one cares enough to bother to check on anything, the aura and/or pretense of positive certainty will likely continue to survive. Perhaps only and until it is eventually, and likely inevitably so, revealed that many of the world's alleged storehouses of gold and silver are in fact filled with nothing but long-untrammeled dust, will people finally care enough to take seriously the wisdom of beginning to, and post haste at that, undertake an examination to verify the authenticity of their own precious metal stores. We shall see, but in the meantime, buyer beware.

 

The question I have is when the graders get in a rare 200 year old or older foreign coin they are not familiar with, what are the steps they use to authenticate it.

 

That's their decision whether or not to. If people want to collect the bullion versions there's nothing wrong with that, if they don't nothing wrong with that either.

 

Clearly we are in total agreement on this, because that's exactly what I just said. Since NOT buying is an option, buying is ALSO an option since there is no such thing as an option that doesn't allow for the possibility of an alternative.

 

That may be one of those secrets that if they told you they'd have to kill you.