Seriously, the fakes are so bad today! Whatever shall we do? http://books.google.com/books?id=YdjfSPLrCpwC&vq=rara avis&pg=PA344#v=onepage&q&f=false That's a description of an altered-date 1804 dollar, published in 1887. Fakes are not new.
Indeed they are not new. I suspect that fakes are nearly as old as coinage itself, and they were and are extremely prolific. Although the first fakes were made to be used in circulation and passed as genuine coins, you can bet that as soon as the first coin collectors came along, that soon after fakes were being made to fool those collectors.
Oh, indeed. Just yesterday I cataloged a contemporary counterfeit of a straited type electrum hemihekte. Coinage hadn't even existed for fifty years and it was already being faked!
Heck, one could argue that even the first coins were "fake". The gold/silver ratio naturally occuring in Lydia is higher than the "electrum" coins the government struck. From the very beginning governments have been hosing the people. The biggest difference today I see is a large country unwilling to stop large manufacturers from openly forging other countries coinage. One would think China openly faking Maple Leaves would be tantamount to an act of war, but western government do not seem to care.
That's probably because maple leaves aren't circulated. Let them fake circulating coinage and I think the governments would care more.
You are probably not aware then that the Netherlands government once actually stopped minting their own coins because the Russian government was counterfeiting so many of the Netherlands coins that the only way they could stop them (the Russians) from counterfeiting new ones, was for them (the Netherlands) to stop minting them completely. And those were coins that circulated.
There are people out there who collect fakes on purpose. Admittedly most are made and traded to deceive but there are categories that become collectible to a certain degree in their own right. I don't have a striated electrum but my earliest plated (fourree) is this 1/3 siglos of the Persian Empire with the early style archer drawing bow. In the Renaissance period demand from collectors caused the production of rarities that just did not exist in quantities great enough so every rich collector could have one. Mine is later than that (late 1800's???) but still was made more to fill a hole than to deceive although I'm sure some have been sold as genuine. It is the only way I will have a Divus Pertinax sestertius. This fake is not a fake or a coin but a token made by the Sterns bicycle company in Syracuse, NY, dated in Roman numerals 1898 copying the famous dekadrachm of Syracuse in Sicily. In 1898, many more people would have got the joke and recognized the Syracuse connection. I am told that these were given out to participants in bicycle races. 99% of the Syracuse dekadrachms that we see are fakes. If you search the archives of Coin Talk you will find several different fakes posted by hopeful newbies who found the thing in grandpa's sock drawer and tell us he brought it back from the war. This one is new manufacture in the Czech Republic and sold struck in tin for about 8 euros and in silver for 107 euros (it weighs well over an ounce so part of this is melt). How well done you think this is will show how familiar you are with the real thing but this is 1/100 to 1/1000 the price of a real one depending on grade. I am not fooled by it but this is many times better than some of the fakes we are shown here and on eBay. Are these 'collectible'? Perhaps they will be when they are the age of the Pertinax. Fakes are fakes. Some fakes are more equal than others. Original Cavino medals of the late Renaissance sell for as much as the coins they copy. Original Beckers of 1800 can bring good money. I value my copy of the original card offering the Black Sea Hoard fakes by a major dealer back in 1989. The study of fakes is part of numismatics.
What about all those fake U.S. $100 bills North Korea makes? We don't go to war with them over it. We had to redesign our bill and make it harder to copy. When the U.S. had the creasing problem with the new bill's printing, I jokingly said to contact North Korea and ask them how they solved the problem. Add the 1 pound British coin in there as well. Counterfeiting was one of the main reason they stopped making it. It was said one in every 24 coins circulating was counterfeit.
Attacks on the precious metals are good for the fiat currencies which is what they are interested in protecting. If people are scared of counterfeits it is likely less precious metals will be purchased. China would not risk their favorable trade deals with the United States and Canada by protecting these operations that are openly selling counterfeit Silver Eagles and Canadian maple leafs. I'm sure they could have them shut down with one phone call, but it's not in their best interest to do so.
Me bad! :>( I posted that without thinking. It was the one pound note that was discontinued. Remove the second to last sentence. However, there is a huge problem with counterfeiting, even with the design change every year. At least one in thirty circulating coins are fakes. It could be as high as 24. There!.... I feel better already. :>)
I'm having trouble understanding how a yearly design change foils counterfeiting. Coins circulate for a long time. If someone is making fake pounds there would be no reason for him to make 2013 dated/type coins since coins in circulation go back for many years. On the other hand the average consumer (worse yet, tourist) could never be expected to know what to expect from every coin. On the other hand a change to paper money makes more sense since few people other than collectors really know what a bill from the series a decade ago looks like. I currently have 19 pieces of paper ($1 to $20) with only one (a $20) dated before series 2006. A similar number of coins in my pocket change included a 1975 nickel. A change in coins will take a while to obsolete those dies he made last year.
It is only a matter of time when someone creates an "app" for your cell phone that allows you to photo the obverse and reverse of the coin and immediately tell you the authenticity of the coin. If it hasn't already happened, it will. Subsequently, someone will hack into the program and override it to identify the fake coin as a real one. Meanwhile, another enterprising person (perhaps the hacker) will sell a program that prevents you from being hacked. Of course, you will also need to buy the regular updates to assure it continues to prevent the evolution of the hacking.
