READ THIS! The Next Generation Of Chinese Counterfeits Have Arrived

You mean like the gold mohurs? I'd love to know more about which types, it's an area I'm really focused on

 

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They have even moved to silver coins. The market is trembling

 

This is correct, the gun is not really sufficient for assay. I use one regularly, but only for a quick receiving analysis on lengths of billet that we intend to machine. If we need a chemical analysis for corrosion resistance on materials like C-276, we need to do destructive testing.

I was wondering about what happened to this, did you consider sending it in to see what they would say, that would be very interesting.

 

The Alibaba product listings for copy coins usually show a photo of the real coin. If you actually order one, what you get is likely going to be a low-quality fake.

PS:
I am not convinced that the coin pictured at the beginning of this thread is actually a counterfeit. I would like to inspect it in person some time.

 

Nice to see you back Mr. Carr, I've collected and loved your pieces for a while. You should know as much as anyone here if the creation technique was wrong. What is your view of the uncharacteristic die gouges? It doesn't seem like what would be produced given the standard process in my view, but I could be missing something.

 

Ahhh, I see what you did there. Nice man

 

Endeavor. Nice wording

 

Thanks,
The die characteristics of the coin shown at the beginning of this thread appear to be those of a very late die state. Die scratches are common on late-state dies. Look at some 1964 Kennedy half dollars (for example) and you will see a lot of them. The thin lines to the left and right of the Eagle's head appear to be die cracks. Such die cracks in that vicinity on genuine US Mint Washington Quarters are very common.

Laser scanning/engraving could be used to replicate a coin. But the surface texture would be wrong. As cut, a laser-engraved die would have a somewhat rough die texture, which requires polishing. Any such polishing would wipe out the excessive flow lines of a late die state piece. So the coin pictured, if it is in fact counterfeit, was not produced by laser (in my opinion). And I'm not convinced that laser scanning and engraving is capable of replicating very slight differences in depth. It is one thing to scan and cut a geometric shape 0.001" deep into a die face. It is a lot more difficult to replicate surface texture and slight changes in design depth. An abrupt change in depth of just 0.0001" would be easily visible on a coin under moderate magnification (10x power loupe).

 

I like this David Carr better.

 

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I think we're thinking on the same lines; to me the new laser etched dies are fairly easy to differentiate from the earlier hub pressings. Modern coins are a different story since the mint has lost the art, but that's a rant for another day. Thanks for your insight.

 

There have been some really good fakes of Victoria half rupees floating around

I can't speak for US coins, but I know for a fact that they have managed to make laser etched die copies of certain world coins with virtually indistinguishable surface qualities. For example Meiji era Japanese yen. They got the technology so perfect on these that they are virtually unidentifiable without inspecting in hand. And even then the visual qualities can fool a trained eye. It's usually the edge or weight that gives it away, and in some cases metal composition analysis is required. Often the metal percentages are off or there are "exotic" metals that don't belong, as is the case with a bit of aluminum showing up in the XRF analysis of the OP coin.

 

How do you know that the Meiji counterfeits were created via laser ? I inspected a couple high-quality counterfeits of them more than 20 years ago. I think that was too long ago for them to have been made via the laser technology of the time.

Do we know how accurate the OP coin scan is ? 0.5% might be within the margin of error. It would be interesting to scan a known genuine silver 1934 Washington quarter and then the OP coin to see how they compare.

 

Then the counterfeiters have won.

 

At least you can save the us coinage if con artists don't get called artists. But with advancement in technology sooner or later counterfeiters will win.

If 10 experts get together and can't decide whether a coin is fake after 30 minutes and they have 5000 more suspect specimens to look at you know its over.

Never thought the day would come. Some of the business practices the Chinese counterfeiters follow are very similar to ....

Can't even write about it. Oh well you probably know. I was very very hurt by what I read last week on this forum. It helped answer a lot of questions.

We should hold a virtual conference someday to exchange notes and brainstorm on how to curb this menace

 

Not yet, to many learned collectors are still around. But they have managed to make us question our holdings. To me it just makes me want to be a bit more familiar with my current quest. No need to question the hobby though, the counterfeit coins are always discovered by someone eventually.

 

I'm talking about the type of fakes that have popped up on the marker within the past 4-5 years. Margin of error is certainly a factor, but when a high end XRF machine picks up metals that are not supposed to be there at all, makes one wonder.

 

General Douglas MacArthur was 100% right when he wanted to invade China using Nationalist Chinese troops from Taiwan. It's all over for us.

 

I do believe I see the difference in their fake to ours .

 

Crazy times ahead of us. There definitely is a need to start spending some serious money on this to counter counterfeits. This needs to be a multiprong attack - new technology on identifying counterfeits, educating the public on counterfeits and eradicate counterfeit rings. That said, I understand that it's not necessarily wise to post every single detail of why a coin is counterfeit as it's essentially a free lesson for counterfeiters to fix their flaw, which increases their likelihood of producing more perfect counterfeits.

A lot of simple suggestions are already redundant such as weigh test, magnetic, judging sellers based on location etc. Sure it will work against basic counterfeits made a few years ago but we are not preparing of what's going to happen. The era of bashing other nations over counterfeits is over. Counterfeits are coming right in your hands literally.

As long as there's big money involved, there's always crooks eager to make money. So have we solved the following - illicit drugs, adulteration, scam etc? I don't think so. It really comes down to how you make the lives of such crooks absolutely hell for them to give up. Sure, you can talk about laws but the crooks are always one step ahead. Regardless of how strict the laws may be, which may include the death penalty, they have the mentality that they can get away with it, it's business as usual.

In my opinion, the leaders of detecting counterfeits, in this instance would be the top TPGs should play a bigger role in keeping records of such counterfeits. They should also play an active role in recalling slabbed counterfeits. Somewhat similar to what's happening to car industry. Secondly, there has to be a way to make the cost of counterfeiting slabs more expensive and more difficult. Perhaps a combination of QR code and eurion constellation on a slab can be interesting - a camera allows it to directly link to TPGs database and shows further details of the coin however does not allow a scanner to scan the exact details. Even if counterfeiters successfully copy and replicate QR code, they will need hackers to do everything else. The whole idea is to make counterfeiter operation a whole lot more expensive. That said, a somewhat similar operation is happening in China to thwart counterfeit goods. No reason why this cannot be applied to slabs in particular for coins that's worth more than thousands of dollars.