The new blog about fakes antiquarian coins is created. Site in Russian. http://antiques-fake.blogspot.com/
That 'fake factory' is in China. Those pics are old and I have seen them before, many more of them from the same place, with all of the worker's faces still visible. That said, it is scary stuff and very sad for our hobby. There is another coin forum online that I went to before coming here, that I refuse to go back to because they attacked me for suggesting this sort of thing is wrong to a new member...
That is sad...it really ticks me off. It's that much harder finding genuine pieces, there's just too many fakes out there. They got to the point to where they started counterfeiting PCGS slabs and I bet it won't be long before they start counterfeiting the NGC slabs...This is why I am trying my absolute best in educating my eyes in finding fakes in all the rare issues or any series. Even if its a coin I don't attend on buying for a long time. It never hurts in learning new stuff about rare coins that are most likely to be counterfeited. It's just scary.....
English version of that info: http://coins.about.com/od/worldcoins/ig/Chinese-Counterfeiting-Ring/index.01.htm "Big Tree Coin Factory" Perfectly legal company in China. Similar links: http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message739741/pg1 http://thisbluemarble.com/showthread.php?t=10292 http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2827043&fpart=2
Stuff like this makes me mad. Those morgans made me feel sick; so beautiful and looks so real, but fake.
just what I was thinking - very disturbing Taken from one of the links: The Chinese are experts at the art of processing newly-minted items to make them look old, and these coins are a typical example of this time-honored Chinese art. So I guess processing counterfeit US coins with a patina is an art now??
At first they were easy to tell from real, but they are getting better all the time. Another thing to scare you all... Big Tree sold on eBay for more than 4 years! eBay didn't shut down their user account until just last year. They had something like 40,000 feedbacks, so you can imagine how many of their coins are out there now. Many of them were probably thrown into safes, bank boxes, and collections.... never to be seen again for another generation! They will pop up initially presumed as authentic.
The fake NGC slabs showed up first. Fake ANACS slabs first showed up in March of 2007, NGC in Aug 2007, and PCGS in Feb 2008.
