My first post, so forgive me if I am repeating an oft-discussed topic. I did some amateur collecting in the 90s and early 2000s, but have been coming back to it recently. I've been reading about the tremendous amount of fakes coming from China in the last several years. There were fakes back in the 1990s, but usually it was limited to changing mint marks or faking a rare error - all coins at the $1000 level. If you collected copper or silver coins for common years ($20-$50 value) you were safe from the counterfeiters. However, now everything is a forgery. Every coin, every material, every year, every grade. I've seen jinghuashei's site and I've read that dealers have trouble spotting fakes. So even if a dealer has a good reputation, they could be unknowingly spotting fakes. Or buyers leaving that good reptuation), may not even know that they have bought fakes. I'm overwhelmed by the fakes and am hesitant to buy anything. The only thing I seem to have confidence in, is junk silver since it has no nuismatic value. What is you guys's strategy having confidence in buying the real deal given the plethora of fakes?
It terrifies me as well. Most dealers in my area are fairly arrogant, and refuse to weigh coins under ~$100. Bring a scale I say! Also, ensure you have a nice magnifying glass.
Welcome aboard! I suppose much would depend on what you are interesting in collecting. I personally don't collect the high dollar value coins. I mostly buy silver coins that have little to no value over melt, so I figure I'm relatively safe. Until the Chinese hack the US Mint dealer ordering system and start sending counterfeit monster boxes that is...
Being from the uk and being a collector of mostly junky low end stuff, i dont have this problem:smile
Well, it has been discussed quite often. Here's an older thread that contains some pretty good info (if you weed through the rhetoric): http://www.cointalk.com/t191639/
I am the same, but they are faking junky low end stuff these days. I saw photos of dies of low-end stuff (<$50). Take for example: this coin, or this coin. A forger could take $3 worth of silver and turn it into a $70 coin. The seller may have bought from somewhere else thinking it was real.
WELCOME TO THE COINTALK FORUM ! Here is a junk silver Peace dollar (two of them) that are made in China to sell as junk silver. Also depicted is a box I purchased for one dollar last week. It is now filled with a fake dollar type set. The Ike in this set is a real one but they make those in China as well.
My strategy is simple. I only buy from folks that are reputable and have an unconditional guaranty that the coin(s) are real. I just bought an Isabella quarter & it looks great. It could always be a high grade fake but I know the dealer that sold it to me. He wouldn't hesitate to refund or replace it if I found it to be a fake. There are grading & counterfeit detection classses available from the ANA.
No, you weren't. But your thinking is pretty common. You are lulled into a false sense of security. For low end stuff is counterfeited just as much, if not more, than high end stuff. The primary difference with today's world regarding counterfeits is not that there are more counterfeits out there, there aren't. It's merely that communications and technology have allowed the public to become aware of just how many fakes there really are. And believe it or not, low end stuff is the primary target because nobody suspects low end stuff. And that makes it easy for the counterfeiters to get away with it. And don't forget, until recent years the most common reason for counterfeiting any coin was so that fake could be passed off as legal money. Thus every date and every mint mark, every denomination, especially the most common, was subject to being counterfeited. Just about every collector there is owns a few, and some own a great many, fakes - and they don't even know it.
Which leads one to ask: For these counterfeit coins, especially the low end stuff, what tests would most of them fail? Except when buying new ASE's from my local dealer, I always test them with a magnet as a minimum, because that's just too quick and easy of a test to skip. Depending on the coins and the person I'm buying them from, I'll usually measure and weigh them too. If they're circulated, I'll give them the ping test as well.
Depends, it could be almost anything. But in my estimation the thing that gives them away most of the time is simply the way the fake looks. That is why they are typically only discovered by somebody who knows coins.
