New forum category for counterfeit coins only - how to id & stay away

I am quite torn about this subject.

While we should be pro active about educating the public about counterfeits, counterfeiters will use this as a free lesson of where their "products" failed. This only encourages them to make higher quality counterfeits, which makes it a lot harder to identify.

The technology is already here. It's only a matter of cost versus benefits to counterfeiters.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I really doubt that Chinese counterfeiters are reading Coin Chat for pointers on how to make better fakes.

 

I really doubt that a Google search for "[key coin name] counterfeit diagnostics" would skip over information posted here.

 

Counterfeiting is a very serious and annoying problem for both dealers and collectors. It seems like nowadays forgers are getting more sophisticated and it makes it more of a challenge to sometimes determine what is real vs what is not. I'm up for any kind of feedback, suggestions, methods, techniques, etc. in order to help us fight this problem.

 

I don't know about Cointalk, but they do follow the PCGS and NGC forums.

And as Caruso's Black Cabinet site becomes more prominent I'm pretty sure they will wind up going there for tips as well.

 

I have a trick up my sleeve in the coming months to fight that contingency, but I'm not going to put all of my cards on the table yet.

 

Believe me, the counterfeiters have far more authoritative resources to guide them in making their products that the ramblings of anybody on this site who considers themselves to be experts. The experts here got their information from the same public sources that the counterfeiters have access to. Nothing said here is giving away any secrets that they don't already have.

 

Do not confuse the average posters here with the expert posters here. Not all CoinTalk experts are "self-proclaimed".

 

A fantastic idea! Each subforum will be practically dead, robbing the site of the feel of vibrancy it has. We can have separate subforums in the world section for each country, and in the ancient section each empire should have its own subforum. In the US board, each series should have its own forum.

The error forum should be broken up for each type of error - parking lot finds, hammered coins, machine doubling, environmental damage, and slot machine coins.

 

I believe that the phrase you're looking for is argumentum ad absurdum.

We're talking about distilling things down for a serious problem within the hobby that affects everyone. Not seeing how many microns thin we can split a hair.