I'm usually looking to buy coins of circulation quality and use my judgement on grading a coin and its authenticity. I'm now thinking of buying some coins of higher value such as the 1909-S VDB cent, 1916-D dime, 1932-D & S quarter. I research quite heavily as it is part of the fun of the hobby to me. With the quantity and quality of fakes of these coins, I was thinking that I might look at graded coins. As I'm looking through ebay, I sometimes think that the graded coins are fakes too. If the counterfeiter is good enough to fake the coin, won't he be good enough to fake the NGC or PCGS plastic holder? How do you tell if it is a graded coin from the grading company? Can you check a registry or something? What prevents the counterfeiter from copying the registry number off of it, if there is such a thing?
You can check the slabs on the PCGS or NGC web sites. Buying graded key date coins is the only way go.
Counterfeit slabs have become a problem for both NGC and PCGS. Some are quite nice and hard to detect, but others actually have misspellings in the hologram. The best way to avoid the is either go to a dealer that you trust of visit the cert verification page of the TPG. An image of the coin will come up for coins that were slabbed recently.
As always, it comes down to, “Buy the coin, not the holder”. If you buy from eBay, you have a guarantee, so be ready to verify the coin is authentic when you receive it and return it if it’s questionable. If it appears authentic from known diagnostics and it’s slabbed and graded correctly, you’ve done what you can and chances are good it’s the real deal. You can also show it to others/dealers to verify what you found, although I’ve met dealers that will tell you any coin is a problem coin, if you didn’t buy it from that dealer, so be knowledgeable about the coin and ready to question those you show it to.
When it comes right down to it, you can't. The only way to prove it is legitimate is to send the slabbed coin in to the TPG and have them verify it is the real deal. Yes. Absolutely nothing stops them from doing that. And that is exactly what they do. And that's why nobody but the TPG themselves can say if it is the real deal or not. Collectors only have 1 defense, and that is to only buy coins (slabbed or raw) from sellers they know and trust.
Two defenses, learn as much about the coins you collect as possible. Learn how to grade them, and learn as much as possible about counterfeit detection. Don't put all your trust in a piece of plastic. Until you learn, try to avoid buying expensive coins.
