http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=6721 I got good news, and I got bad news. First, the good news : China is cracking down on counterfeiters ! Now, the bad news : they could care less about anybody's money other than their own. No indication they are cracking down on rare coin counterfeiters. A few juicy tidbits from the article : "The Chinese government may be turning a blind eye to counterfeit merchandise made in China and being sold in other parts of the world, but the Chinese government has had enough of those enterprising individuals who would counterfeit China's own money." =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~ "Yes, it is ironic that while China appears to almost condone knock off products and counterfeits of other people's merchandise it has found there is now a cottage industry of people willing to counterfeit their own money." =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~ "...police have also been told to crack down not only on those producing and selling these bad notes, but on anyone spending them as well. While in the United States if you should spend a counterfeit bank note by accident the most you might have to face would be confiscation of the note followed by a possible interview by the Secret Service. In China spending such a note might lead to your arrest regardless of your knowledge of the authenticity of the note."
Very typical of most any government! :goof: This is why we need an international law governing counterfeiting and sponsored through the U.N.! :thumb: Ribbit
How many countries do you know that pay a lot of attention to international laws? Even we tend to ignore them if they don't suit our sensibilities.
Oh yeah ! That oughta do it ! The UN has done such a great job with poverty in Africa. United Nations motto : "GENOCIDAL DICTATORS !!! FEAR OUR NON-BINDING RESOLUTIONS !!!"
LOL......these guys went too far. You can duplicate any other countries currency or coinage but don't you dare duplicate "Mother China's" stuff. Oh brother....
Kinda makes me glad I bought my trade dollar almost 40 years ago, when anyone in China showing any initiative would be thrown in prison.
And use it to pay for all the stuff we import from there. Counterfeit trade dollars from the far east were a problem forty years ago as well.
But I don't think they were any of the quality we're seeing today , most were crude cast counterfiets made for the tourist trade in Hong Kong . rzage:whistle:JMO
I've got to agree. The quality, if I can use that word, is much better today. While in Hong Kong in 1970 I saw some pretty crude copies. It was really obvious they were counterfeits. Back then the penalty for getting caught smuggling anything across the frontier w/ Red China was pretty severe, death! A high risk to take for the relatively small counterfeit coin market at that time. In the ensuing years I have had several offers to buy my TD, but not enough to make me part with it. So I'm comfortable with it.
True most of them were crude, but there were good quality pieces as well. (Possibly the quality pieces were not coming from the Far East but were made domestically.) The same thing can be said today. Most of the current Chinese fakes are crude, but their are quality pieces as well. The crude pieces are on the decline today, and the quality pieces are increasing.
And that increasing quality is, I believe, probably the single largest threat in our world of collecting. On another thread several CT'ers have reported a counterfeit dollar to EBay, with no apparent result. Sometimes it feels like we are calling into the wind.
