This one's from Russia, for bonus "what could possibly go wrong?" points. $ 1 USA. 1918. 1924.+ BONUS. NOVODEL. UNCIRCULATED Two commem halves plus a "bonus coin", a silver dime -- oh, look! It's a 1916! And it looks like it has a little D on the back! And the three of them together weigh 25.4 g, which is great for keeping your shipping costs low, given that the real coins would total 27.5 g. There's another lot with two commems and a shiny red Lincoln cent, looks like a 1909-S. I didn't look closely at the reverse, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see extra letters there, too. $20 or $30 for each lot, plus $4 to ship from Mother Russia. As always, I encourage anyone who wants to add to their "black book" collection to buy in (before any unsuspecting buyers get taken in), and then rely on Buyer Protection to get your money back without requiring you to return the coins. If eBay isn't going to give us an effective way to report counterfeits, we'll just have to communicate to them with the tools they've left us.
It says in description area that this is a replica, not in English though. I`ve seen A LOT of these "novodel" lots, all Chinese fakes.
The use of Novodel isn't new and could be interesting if the US coins were made by the Russian as the word refers to coins made by the original mint in a type of 'recognition' of the originally struck coin by the original government mint. So Russian coins could be Novodel and I think collectible, but making German and US coins in a russian mint would not be novodel, just counterfeit. The russian says "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention to the lot! Status: no magnet replica silver coinage, and not cast indistinguishable from the original!"
...Yes... "completely indistinguishable from the original" except for the silver wash coming off of the surfaces and brass underneath showing through. Oh, and the clearly wrong diagnostics and look to all three of them. Other than those problems, they are "completely indistinguishable" from the originals.
Hmm... interesting. Still entirely against eBay policy, of course, since they aren't stamped as copies.
That's true, but last time I checked, their auction-reporting options still only displayed "replica coins not marked as copies" -- in other words, they haven't updated their "Report This Auction" system to reflect current policy. Not that it matters, anyhow, since the reports apparently get routed directly to the bit-bucket now.
