Here's a scary thought.

With economic growth slowing down in China, counterfeiting will remain a go to moneymaker since it's not affected by their economical issues. As long as people elsewhere are buying, they're faking.

 

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Dude they have entire fake apple stores in malls selling fake iPhones in china. They aren't going to stop

 

Current slab quality is good enough. If you were to check you will find that most dealers or collectors can't tell a current quality fake slab from a real one.

Except now you have to be able to recognize an authentic slab to know for sure the coin is authentic.

And often the people WORKING in the fake Apple store don't realize the store is a fake.

 

Iphones that "read" credit cards have an adaptor that the cards "slides" through thereby making the magnetic data on the card "readable".

Perhaps the closest thing possible to what you are suggesting would be a bar code reader app.

But then, bar codes can easily be faked along with labels, and the slabs that contain the labels.

The "Best" defense against counterfeit coins is to "know" what to look for. Inferior fields, devices, devices that are not accurate for the year. But then, this requires a lot of work.

The next thing to know is that if its too good to be true, then it probably is.
Never make cash transactions "on the fly" unless your at a Coin Show dealing with a dealer and/or in an established coin shop.

If you own a coin shop, never finalize the transaction until you've validated the product.
(Remember the If its too good to be rtue...........?)

 

with slabed coins I do not see the big deal of not being able to touch the actual coins. Many have wonderful circulated coins in their collection. So you have a trophy wife and she has beutiful sisters who are less picky about such things.

 

Conder, why don't you publish a new edition of your "slab book"? You should be able to make a fortune on it.

Chris

 

Conder...I totally agree with your comment regarding the buyer needing to know the difference between an authentic slab, vs. a fake. As of now, the only thing that really stands out, at quick glance, to my eyes, is the font and letter/number placement on the cert, and the 'casual' collector, that just 'buys the holder', will not be any wiser, and get taken to town. Should they EVER get THAT 'down pat', it's going to make things very dicey, and could cast a very large cloud over our hobby. They have really ramped up their work on trying to duplicate U.S. coinage, and have been doing a much better job making a good, passable, product manufactured, much better than what we were seeing just a few years ago. Now, their focus is on slabs. Heaven help us if they really get to the point of being able to duplicate, exactly, with proper metal content, a coin and putting them into a counterfeit slab that has the proper font and placement of letters/numbers on these fake certs. They've been working very hard, and I feel it's only a matter of time until they DO get it 'down pat'. The only saving grace would be the bar code, and those can, and eventually will be, next on their agenda. Of course, this doesn't help those who aren't 'well versed' in what the Chinese are doing, and have already spent good money for these fakes. I could say it's the buyer's own fault, but the Chinese are getting very good, and those who don't 'do their homework' will get pounded. We've seen it happen, are seeing it happen, and will continue to see it happen. And there's not a damn thing we, as collectors, can do about it, except keep, and stay, informed of the progress they are making with these bogus pieces (and bogus slabs). The always-advancing progress the Chinese counterfeiter's keep making, will continue to progress until their product IS a perfect example. It's getting scary.

 

This is precisely why I floated the idea of a slab reader as a smartphone app. In a new variation, the TPG could associate an embedded second number with each slab, not printed on the slab. Here is the sequence:

1. You (the Buyer) and the Seller are in Minneapolis, dealing face-to-face.

2. The Buyer uses his app to read the Seller’s slab.

3. The Buyer punches in his app’s account number and password (yes, Chinese hackers may have
stolen the account number and password, but it doesn’t matter).

4. The TPG software then displays an automated 1-time-use toll-free number.

5. The Buyer calls this number and enters the second slab number plus his GPS.

6. The TPG system then confirms the second slab number, against the coin’s description AND the visible number on the slab. But it sends that confirmation ONLY to a phone located at the GPS just entered seconds before (which the Chinese will not know). No confirmation = the slab is a fake.

7. The TPG’s 1-time use toll-free number will never work again. To re-submit, even 2 minutes later, you start over.

Note this system does not confirm the COIN is genuine. I am not a programmer or security specialist, so if I have left out a critical step, or written ambiguous instructions, post that fact in this thread. The app may be free, but the Buyer may be charged each time he uses the service package provided by the TPG.

 

This is a good reason to get back to the basics and abolish slabs.

 

No one can "abolish" slabs -- this is still a partially-free country.

 

I assume it's still safe to buy from the US mint and directly from the major retailers like Apmex, etc.?

 

I'm surprised the security features of the current slabs are still so lax. This is 2014 and they're relying on a hologram and bar code to foil the bad guys? Lame.

 

You cannot be serious.

You do realize that there are over 60 million, if not more, slabs just by PCGS and NGC and that this expensive system, which does not even take into consideration the number of hoops which will need to be jumped through just to update the data for each coin EACH time a coin is sold and/or the owner moves either to another state or across the country or to a new country (not that ANYBODY bothers to do this anyway) or that perhaps I buy a coin in Baltimore yet live in California then decide to sell in California, is all based upon accurate data supplied, initially by the TPG, and then updated by the owner?

I cannot recall the number of times I've gone to enter a coin in a Registry only to get the annoying "This coin is already registered in Someone's Set" message simply because folks DO NOT even update that information when they sell a coins.

Could it possibly be anymore complicated other than learning about what you're doing??

This "counterfeit paranoia" thing is just getting way out of hand.

 

This is about slabs. Nobody "updates" their coins, or reports the coin's location. What did you read, the first two lines??? I guess it's just paranoia until YOU get stuck with a bogus item...

 

The only way that the counterfeiters can be slowed down, if not stopped, is for the federal government to actually enforce the current counterfeiting laws and update them as necessary to protect the hobby. Put into place severe penalties, fines and/or incarceration, and go after the importers, local distributors and sellers no matter how large or small of such items aggressively. Until then we will have to be vigilant and do what we need to to protect ourselves from the counterfeiters.

 

Actually if pcgs and ngc "recall" all their slabs and photograph them into their library then you could check the high resolution picture and compare it with the slab in hand. Yes it would be a lot of work but that is my best idea

 

I have to politely disagree. While this seems to be a way of reducing counterfeits in the market, this alone is not good enough to exterminate such "producers".

If you look at history in particular adulteration, ilicit drugs etc - all of them share one common theme: it's the public waging a war against the counterfeiters, crooks, profiteers. What many fail to acknowledge is that these markets exist because part of the society demands it.

You may want to start whinging about counterfeits coming out from China and how lax the government offcials are but death penalty do exist. The milk adulteration is a good example. With limited education, the public is led to believe that adding milk to infants' diet will provide better nutrition. If you are a parent, I'm certain you would think of the best for your child. Only problem in China is - milk in any form costs a fortune. The public demanded cheap form of milk. Needless to say, you can only guess what happened afterwards.

There were capital punishment for those crooks that did such crimes but even with such penalty, why did they do this? It's purely greed and there was a market that demanded such product.

So what is the best way to deal with such market? While the government should play a bigger role in stamping out counterfeits - I believe the onus comes back to us. It is not the government that provides funds to these rings but it's from the public. We need to proactively educate the public more about counterfeits as well as actively guide new collectors the right path. Lastly, stop funding these counterfeiter rings!!!

 

I think we are doomed unless the Chinese make it illegal to counterfeit things. That goes against their culture as they see no issue with it. However if made illegal there it would slow way down as they actually have enforceable penalties and no one gives a crap if you were not raised right or had a hard life..they still execute people there. Until then, education on the buyers part is the only recourse.

 

I'm not a slab guy but can't you go onto NGC's, PCGS's, etc. website and view the coin by its number? If that is the case, you should be able to see if its exactly the same coin by looks only. If that's not the case, why are folks slabbing the coins anyway? I do understand that they probably didn't put them on websites in the old days (prior to 2000). As the Chinese are quite bright, they would probably fake slab in the older fornat that's not traced by the net.

 

some don't have pictures