This doesn't apply to all the counterfeit trade dollars, but the ones coming out of the orient almost always have the following problem: There are tiny raised bumps on parts of the coin, visible only if you are extremely nearsighted of have a glass. There are a whole lot of counterfeits out there.
You'll find that those raised bumps are a typical give-away for many different counterfeits of all time periods and all coins.
The raised lumps on the cast coins are caused by voids in the molds. The voids are usually caused when little pieces of the mold material adhere to the coin when it is removed from the molding material or from bubbles of air trapped on the surface of the coin when it is pressed into the mold material. There can also be pits in the coin which are caused by bubbles of gas in the molten metal.
Are there Mintmarks on legitimate Trade Dollars? I know alot of the oens I have seen on Ebay have either S or CC marks. When I look at bestcoin.com or pcgs.com, they do not differintiate between any mintmarks.
If you're asking about US TDs, then according to the Red Book they were minted at Philadelphia, Carson City and San Francisco, including an S/CC variety in 1875. (From 1879-85 there were a few thousand more minted, all in Philly.) Elswhere, Japanese TDs were minted at both Tokyo and Osaka, without mint marks; and the British TDs were mostly produced at Bombay (B) and Calcutta (C). In a couple of years they were also minted in London (no mark). According to Krause there are 1895-1900 coins with no mint mark, but they were actually produced at one or the other of the Indian mints and the lack of a mint mark was in error. The bulk of the British TDs were minted after the US and Japan had quit making them.
