Opinion on an 1808 CAROLUS IIII 8R Mexico counterfeit or not?

There's nothing that catches my eye right off to make me suspect it, but that doesn't really mean much as some counterfeits were quite good. Do you own this coin or are you just thinking about it ? I ask because if you own it an exact weight would be helpful, even if not necessarily definitive. The maximum permissible weight for an 8 reales was 27.2638 grams, the minimum was 26.8646 grams. So if it's within that range - it might be genuine.

Of course you could always just buy the book -
https://www.amazon.com/Counterfeit-...990802906/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=

 

Sorry but that's not even close to true. Think about it a minute. If they use silver, and get the weight right, and make a decent quality fake - what can they sell that coin for ?

Let's see, silver's what, $16-$17 an oz ? And if they can get $300 for the coin ? That's a minimum of 15 times their investment. Seems like a pretty good profit margin to me.

There is only one way to authenticate a coin, that's to have somebody who is qualified to do it - do it. Everything else is still just guesswork.

 

Back when this was posted I was tempted to reply beyond what I did with the 'roll eyes' smiley but I refrained. But seeing it again ..........

I could say you have much to learn, or I could say there is much you are not aware of, and either would be reason for your comments, your way of thinking. But in any case I'll just explain.

Do you know what the most commonly counterfeited coin is, ever was ? The 1 cent coin. Only it was not counterfeited to fool collectors, it was counterfeited for use in commerce. Do you know what the most commonly counterfeited note is or ever was ? The one dollar bill, again for use in commerce. And of course you'll be skeptical and ask why would anybody ever do that ? The answer is simplicity itself - it's because you never get caught. And you never get caught because nobody ever thinks twice about pennies or 1 dollar bills being fakes, and so they readily accept them. And the counterfeiter laughs all the way to the bank.

Now might say OK, but what does that have to do with what we're talking about here ? Well, there's more than one type of counterfeiter, meaning they have different reasons for doing what they do. But their products are still counterfeits. So allow me to give you an another example.

For literally centuries the most widely most readily accepted coin in the world was the Netherlands gold ducat. So the Russian Royal Mint decided to make their own Netherlands gold ducats and they counterfeited them by the millions upon millions. And they did this for 150 years ! And in some years the number of counterfeits produced dwarfed the number of genuine coins that were produced that year. And every single coin was the correct fineness, and weight as the genuine ducats, but every single one of them was still a counterfeit, and more importantly still is a counterfeit. And they are such good counterfeits that even the TPGs, all of them, and yes that includes NGC and PCGS, authenticate and slab them as being genuine - but each one is a counterfeit.

Add to this that in the 50', 60's and 70's there were huge factories in the middle east that did nothing but produce counterfeit coins of basically every nation on earth. The size and scale of these factories make today's Chinese operations pale in comparison. And the coins produced by these factories were all made of the correct size, weight, and fineness. And the coins were so good, of such high quality that they ever fooled the actual mints of the countries who produced the genuine coins. And of course these folks who owned these factories made literal fortunes.

My point in all of this is simple - don't think for even 1 second that just because a coin is the correct size, weight, and fineness that it cannot be a counterfeit. Not only do counterfeiters do this, they do and have done it rather often !

There is only one way to authentic coins and that is with die diagnostics. Size, weight, and fineness are quite often meaningless.