ok, I recently went to an auction, and I purchased some chinese cash coins - silver. Of course, I didn't get the chance to weigh them before I purchased (apparently, unlike others). After I bought them, a local dealer told me he had weighed a couple and discovered they were not real (like most you will find)... which I thought was sort of an unfair advantage. - anyway, Should I have known better, and how do I go about making sure that none of them are real? If they are all fakes, are they pretty much just worth the silver value (in which case, I'm out a couple hundred bucks). I thought it was worth the risk when I was bidding, I guess.
The bad news is that they very probably are fakes, and the worse news is that very few of the "replica" cash coins are actually silver, although some may have a smidgin of silver in them. Weight is a way of spotting fakes made from base metal, not the occasional one made with an approximately correct alloy, so if yours were unmasked by their weight - oh well! Generally correct alloy replicas are copies of coins with high rarity/collector value, not circulation counterfeits. IMHO It's never worth risking money you are not willing to throw in the trash to buy coins that you are not knowledgeable about from any source that doesn't provide inspection and return privileges. "Buy the book before you buy the coin." There are many hundred different versions of Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Anamese (Vietnam) cash coins, in a variety of metals; mostly cast and very occasionally struck over the course of more than 1,000 years. Minor variations in the calligraphy of the characters are often the only way to distinguish the real from the unreal. In general knowledgeable cash coin collectors won't pay more than nominal prices unless they are sure of the attribution.
well, I guess I figured it was inventory of a coin dealer that went out of business. I would have figured a dealer would have marked them as fake, if they were so, directly on the 2x2... but maybe that's why he went out of business. I've heard most chinese coins are fake, so I don't know what made me throw in a bid. oh well. No different that buying stock that goes south - and I've done that enough times.
No one likes to make these kind of mistakes - but sooner or later we all do. But as long as you learn from the mistake - then it is like spending money on books. Education is education - no matter how you get it. It's just that some forms of education are more expensive than others
if you are buying Chinese sliver coins, don't go online.... those replicate are sold for less than $2 US back in china.. I've got some - just for fun - but they rust soon Sorry for pushing this post up....didn't realize it was from 2004
