Fake PCGS on eBay

This is pretty disturbing. I guess it was going to happen sooner or later.

http://www.pcgs.com/articles/article_view.chtml?artid=5286&universeid=313

[FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica]In recent days, counterfeit coins in counterfeit PCGS slabs have begun to appear on eBay, the online auction site. All of the counterfeit coins/holders seen so far are coming out of China. Alert members of the PCGS Message Boards were the first to notify PCGS of the counterfeit coins/holders.

I doubt eBay will stop it either.


[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

That just makes me sick. Here you buy a slabbed coin for protection against being shafted and it still could happen. I guess you will have to verify the certificate number before buying. I wonder if NGC and ANACS counterfeit coins will follow.

 

It gets worse

Many of the fakes are using good cert numbers. I guess they are just going though the database and using numbers that will correspond to the fake they produced. In the article, they list several coins that found that checked out with the PCGS database yet were still fakes.

 

I hope the FBI and Secret Service catches the counterfeiters and jails them for life. How do they know a which cert numbers correspond to specific type of coin?

 

buy the coin not the holder

 

I agree..

But if you were buying a coin on ebay, which you can not see first hand, how would you know till you got it. I guess if the price is too good to be true it is.
Who knows..

 

if you cant see the coin in detail and dont know the seller dont buy the coin

 

Maybe

Although I have not see one first hand, I understand some of these fakes are pretty good and difficult for the average collector to spot.

 

exactly why you shouldnt be buying those kind of coins from uknown guys on ebay with bad pics

 

Here's an interesting Ebay store in China, that may fit right in with this discussion:

http://stores.ebay.fr/Eastern-Numismatics-And-Philatelic

Notice how the last numbers on some of the PCGS slabs are masked?

Ribbit

 

The jurisdictions of the FBI and Secret Service do not extend to China so don't look to either the FBI or the SS to arrest the Chinese counterfeiters. There is nothing they can do about an illegal activity that is happening on foreign soil.

If someone in their network is selling their Chinese counterfeits in the US then the FBI or the SS could make an arrest.

One very simple way is to buy a genuine slabbed coin. Or browse the Heritage site, Teletrade, etc. and gather cert numbers (along with the coin info - series, date, mintmark, grade, etc.).

 

Just don't buy from Chinese sellers... it's as simple as that.

If you stick to just buying high priced coins from North American sellers and come across a counterfeit, you can call the FBI or the Secret Service.

 

When and if people stop buying from sellers in China, they will just move their operation to the USA. There are already some forged coins appearing from US based sellers.

 

But then they are in your playground and can be charged under US law.

You can't touch them when they operate out of China, because half of the Chinese govenment is on the take and the other half doesn't care.

 

The USA has done a fine job of enforcement of product safety on imports how in the world do you expect them to enforce stuff when they are already lax? Most imports are never inspected. Only something like 1% of everything coming in daily through the Port of Long Beach gets inspected.

And I would opin that there are just as many frauds in the USA as there are in China, look at the self slabbers on that great online fleaMarket.

 

Oh I agree, we'll never ever get rid of the problem completely... and it's very silly to think so.

But you have to admit, it's got to be more risky for counterfeiters to operate in the U.S.A. then it is to operate out of China.

 

But the counterfeiters will never operate in the USA, they will have their minions here in the USA pawn their wares off. These guys are unscrupulous, do you think for one moment they care if somebody here that they likely planted gets doffed off by the FBI or Secret Service?

The only area where they have managed to run afoul of the authorities in China was a couple of years ago they started minting current Chinese coins, usually Yuan coins and selling them for something like 3 Jiao, or equivalent of 30% of the value of the Yuan. Then you can bet the authorities stepped in and shut up shop and hauled off the violators.

 

The most effective way to deal with counterfeiters is knowledge, and education of the collecting public. The unscrupulous prey on those that do not know any better.

 

WAKE UP AMERICA...Lead paint, poision pet food, bundles of $100 US currency that agents admit are best ever to have been printed. Mediciene that identical in likness, you name it and CHINA re-produce it, and until AMERICA quits buying/flooding the market its not gonna stop. Its all about profit, ship the stuff to them, war lords in-slave the people, force them to work, while AMERICA lays off its workers. >>> Stoping fake slabs , what a joke>>> boycott the people that allow them to sell there trash, whoops, that would be ebait, that would never happen, to much profit. OZARKTRAVLER

 

Ozark, youre shouting at the deaf here. theres one guy in this chat room who thinks China isnt communist. I dont know when all of a sudden they have become our friend and ally. Werent they the ones giving arms to North Korea in the '50s? I just havent seen thier philosophy or government change since then.