seated liberty fakes

I had to tell one of my bosses that here seated liberty dollars are fakes. kinda sucks she was exited to have them. she took them as payment from a customer at another convinence store she worked at years ago.


Yes they both have the same reverse I didn't mix up the images. that was the last nail in the coffin of the 1865.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The 1865 is definitely a fake-- that style of 6 was not used on coins in the 1860s.

 

Fortunately she is not out a lot of money. (I assume by taking them as payment (as you said) that she is out only $1 each.) If the customer spent the fakes knowing they were fake he could be arrested for passing a counterfeit.

 

Yeah she only paid a buck apiece for them. There was actually 3 but she gave one away. I offered to buy them for $1 each but she said no. and yes I would have put them in 2x2's and marked them as fakes.

 

They would make great reference pieces to study so you learn what to cheap Chinese fakes look like. When you compare fakes like this to genuine coins the differences become obvious.

 

I got a couple of the 90% silver fake 1916-d mercury dimes from the Chinese guy for just that reason: reference. One circulated, one uncirculated. After looking at them, I don't think I would be fooled. It just feels like there is something wrong with them. Maybe it was the composition. He said they were 90% silver, but he didn't say they were 10% copper. Why he'd fudge on the copper I don't know.

The reeded edges of the coins are especially suspicious.

 

What makes you think the 10% is not copper? Have you weighed the coin?

 

No, I haven't. But when I was emailing him about the coins, I told him I was ordering 2 of the 1916-d mercury dimes, "90% silver, 10% copper". When he wrote me back confirming his understanding, he eliminated the words "10% copper". So, that makes me wonder. I haven't bought a scale yet, I need a good recommendation on one.

 

Coin collectors routinely refer to "90% silver". It is understood the remaining 10% is copper. I am fairly certain the Chinese counterfeiter is using 90% silver / 10% copper so his coins are the exact same allow used by the US Mint. (Why would he get the 90% silver part correct and not the 10% copper part? That would make no sense. And what would he use instead of copper? Whatever he used would not save him enough to make it worth the trouble.)

 

I agree. But he advertised "90% silver" and didn't say anything about copper. So, when I wrote him I made sure to mention "10% copper" and I think it's strange that he eliminated that part in his reply. That's really all that makes me suspicious. When I got the coins in the mail I went to a Staples store and looked at scales. But, I wanted to do my research first and have just never followed up on it.

 

The coins are counterfeit. Does it really matter if the 10% is copper?

 

90% Silver plate! To much to lose with Coin Silver, and the chinese are all about the small sales cause in the long run it makes the most profit!
If it's silver plated than it's probably 99% copper...

 

Thanks for posting the Liberty Seated dollars

In December I was cashing a friend's Christmas bonus check & the teller asked if I wanted a Silver dollar she had received. It was a Peace dollar. I quickly determined it was fake & informed her it was suspect & probably manufactured overseas & made of base metal. Of course, she asked how I knew this. There were too many people in line to have a long discussion. I just said that I saw several diagnostics that point to it being fake & we can discuss it later. I haven't been back to that branch to continue the discussion.

 

Ron, that is true of the cheap Chinese counterfeits we are so familiar with. But the Chinese offer higher-grade fakes that meet US Mint specs for alloy and weight. The Chinese counterfeiters sell those higher-grade counterfeit coins for much more than the cheap fakes (the highest-grade counterfeits sell for hundreds of dollars rather than a couple of dollars). These higher-grade counterfeits are much more difficult to detect because 1) they meet US Mint specs 2) they are usually struck with better dies and 3) they are struck with more pressure and have more detail.

 

Dang HOBO that is very scary! Does the PCGS laser deal able to detect the broad differences of these superior planchets or is only the tiny die difference the way to stop these?

 

Here's a poor picture of them. The only reason I brought up the copper idea is that I thought maybe the composition made a difference in the feel of the coins. Today is the first time I've looked at them in months, and I think maybe I was a little too prejudice since I knew they were fake. If I knew how to take better pictures I'd photo the backs. There is something about the back of the one on the left that I think might make me suspicious, but I don't know.

I can definitelly say that the reeded edge of the one on the right looks bad. It's just the same on the left coin, but it's condition might make you think that it was just wear.

Still, I think if someone were to do a good fake of a pcgs slab they could sell these things and nobody would be the wiser because they would never resubmit the coin.

Also, RonTerry's suggestion makes me think I should get a scale and weigh them. But, the just by hand the weight doesn't feel that much different from any other dime.

 

The "sniffer" shouldn't detect anything because there is nothing unusual to detect - no added chemicals, no added metal, etc. Expert graders / authenticators should be able to spot the fakes due to one or more of a number of things - tool marks, repeating depressions, unnatural luster, etc. These experts see thousands of coins every day and they know what the genuine coin should look like. When they see a fake they are more likely than the rest of us to notice "this coin does not look right".

 

I have a fake seated liberty of a different sort, one that was probably a contemporary counterfeit. It is a seated liberty dime and only in G condition, so it circulated heavily after it was produced, and I guess, presumable never detected as a counterfeit during all that time. It was in a collection of coins that I inherited from my grandfather and I always wondered where he found it. It make things sadder for me that it's fake, because the date is 1872-CC, so if it had been real, it would've been a nice addition to my collection.

 

Why was that "the last nail in the coffin"? Other than die markers that tell the individual dies apart, a genuine 1847 and 1865 would have the same reverse. (The motto wasn't added until 1866.)

 

opps I thought it was 65 the motto was put on not 66