1881-CC “Morgan” $’s- a near epidemic!

Over the past couple of months I have documented over a dozen of these listed by different sellers; the cert was active until I reported them in another forum:



Quickly changed to this:


Several ended the auctions when told of the issues, others argued the point and some got quite ingenious in their relists and attempts to still sell them…

This seller refused to show the entire label and cited the cert of a genuine one for sale at the same time.


Interested in how deceptive they may be I bought one ingeniously listed as “not real”; the image doesn’t do it justice, as it actually has some nice luster. The "coin" looks better initially than the holder.



I am glad I don’t collect Morgans…

 

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Wow. Once again, great work, Jack.

 

Wait...you knowingly bought a fake ?

 

Tough times to be a collector when the same fake coin/fake slab combo is showing up once a week.

 

Nice catch. Yeah on a common date a lot might not look close at tge coin and just go by the holder

 

I think epidemic now qualifies...

 

Yikes that's scary!!!good thing I'm not a serious Morgan collector,one question why Morgans?.

 

What will happen is that for heavily counterfeited slabs, dealers and auction houses and hopefully, collectors will buy only "chipped" slabs and use readers connected to the net to verify the slab. Duplication of a chip ID requires electronics and encryption knowledge and equipment far beyond what's available to counterfeiters. So far, only PCGS is chipping their slabs and only a small percentage of those on the market are chipped. As slab counterfeiting becomes more prevalent, more folks will send in coins for reslabbing in order to get a chipped slab. Otherwise, they may have a hard time selling their coins.

I submitted a letter to Coin World in 2015 suggesting that TPGs should chip their slabs. Got a mealy-mouth reply that they couldn't publish it because there were so many letters in line ahead of mine to be published. Real reason was they were developing their own slab chip system, which is now a nothing because PCGS is doing it. Hopefully, NGC will start soon.

The slab chip ID has advantages beyond verifying the validity of a slab. It can simplify inventory control and help prevent theft in coin stores and shows.

Cal

 

Popular series, high mintages, nobody looking at VAMs, made of silver, etc.

@Jack D. Young those « coins » are made of silver, right? You also mentioned some of them have nice luster, so they must be struck counterfeits?

 

Jack, I tried to send a PM but got an error message. Could you please get in touch?
-Mike

 

Mine appears to be struck Mike.

 

Yes; I wanted to see one in hand to assess how dangerous it may be as well as verify it did NOT have an actual working cloned chip.

 

How much would this add to the raw cost of a holder ?

How do these chips continue to send a signal over years if not decades ? Are they battery-operated or DRAM-chips or what ?

Not an electronics expert, as you can tell.

 

I assume they use something akin to RFID, which in its simplest form requires no battery and should last indefinitely. They cost less than a dollar, sometimes much less.

The passive RFID is installed in the slab. When in close proximity to a reader, the reader provides the power to the RFID, allowing the RFID to respond with it's coded ID.

[disclaimer]: I have no idea how PCGS really does it, I'm making assumptions as an engineer.

 

Exactly. One analogy is a tuning fork: hit it, and it emits a tone, but it doesn't have to have a speaker or a battery to do it. An RFID reader "hits" the chip with an electronic pulse that makes the chip "ring", transmitting back a radio signal that encodes its identity.

 

The chip used on PCGS holders uses NFC (near field communication), which is an inductive field communication similar to wireless battery charging. All PCGS holders issued today have it … you get it whether you want it or not. The chip gets its power from the reader, so no onboard battery is needed.

The chip does not just send a single, predetermined code each time it’s interrogated. That would not be secure because someone could read the code and program another chip to send the same signal. Instead when the chip is queried it sends its ID code plus an additional code that is generated with an algorithm known only to a valid interrogator (like PCGS). So why not intercept this code and program a chip to send it too? Won’t work because the algorithm changes the code each time when a genuine chip is interrogated. The algorithm is known to a valid interrogator though, and it can verify that a valid or invalid code was sent. The previously sent code is considered invalid by a valid interrogator, which is why sending it again won’t work.

Cal

 

Got any links for technical details on this? My understanding of passive RFID was that it almost always just sends a simple identifier. Maybe some kind of call-and-response, where the reader sends a random number and the tag sends a response based on a private algorithm (or even some small private lookup table)?

 

Below are some links that give info on NFC/RFID security protocols. If you think about it, a chip that sends out the same info every time it is interrogated is easily cloned. Someone with a reader can capture the output, then program a new chip to send out the same info. There are lots of electronics engineers and techs who can do this. If the info came from a coin slab chip, the new chip could then be placed in a counterfeit coin slab.

I don’t know the details of the algorithm(s)/encryption method(s) used in the chips put in PCGS slabs but would be shocked if the chips are simple send-out-the-same-info-every-time chips.

Cal

https://security.stackexchange.com/...ot-be-cloned-when-they-are-passive-technology

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/63483/how-do-nfc-tags-prevent-copying

www.cs.fsu.edu/~burmeste/410.pdf

 

Great discussion on the chip!

In the meantime another seller with an original '81-CC fake and then fake 1st strike 2021's as well...

 

I haven't even looked at one of these 2021.
The coin does look a little off. What gives this one away?

Edit: I see both have the same cert number.