Featured Counterfeit Morgans: hands on with a high quality Chinese fake

I try to maintain a PC demeanor, but some don't comprehend.

I find your statements pertaining to counterfeit Washington quarters and a dollar bill to be ludicrous, in violation of reality and fact. Our currency is currently challenged by counterfeiting, but to an insignificant degree relative to the "Fiat" that we throw at the world. Citizens have the means to generate criminal/civil action against violators of existing laws.

The government has extended great effort to legislate acts which would allow protection of various activities/rights, but without citizen participation the laws are moot

The Trademark Act, Hobby Protection Act, and most recently Collectible Coin Act was generated to appease the various relatively minor segment of our vast society who feel threatened by the legal commerce of other countries.

A few have initiated actions against violators of existing legislation, but as a community we continue to allow believed unlawful sales of illegal products within our sphere of influence, by "dealers" et al.

JMHO

 

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if you want to learn about all the fake gold and silver check out this site https://fakebullion.com/ i know the guy who made it it has a database of a lot of fakes some look pretty convincing

 

It's easy to make a statement like that and then fail to carry forward with a further explanation. Perhaps you'd like to grace us all with why you feel my statements were "ludicrous"

 

Well Homer, I believe your avatar is quite befitting when viewing your idiocrasy pertaining to a grasp of reality.

When digesting your "referenced" statements, I had a faint hope that my suggestion for enlightenment by doing personal internet research might allow you to personally realize the fallacy of your statements. Upon your asking for an expansion, I supplied same, that you haven't a realistic grasp of the effects if a peer of yours decided to flood the market with "copy" quarters or a dollar bill. It's now apparent as to the futility of an explanation/expansion.

I trust you'll understand when I continue this exercise with my pet rock, that provides more acceptable responses.

The essence is that our government has done virtually everything possible to placate whiners who complain about inadequate action towards currency violations that generally are facilitated by their members. Special legislation was generated to specifically accommodate a population segment that generally appear to only be concerned about their relatively minuscule greedy goals. A segment having a stated prevalent attitude that those personally uneducated about fraudulent currency transactions are responsible for their own losses.

There are some of us that are expending great effort to see that there will be significant changes in the future to correct some of the currency fraud transactions initiated/facilitated in this country.

We may again have a numismatic society predominantly of collectors.

JMHO

 

Well JMHO, thanks for your "response". I ran your doublespeak through Google Translate to figure out what you were actually saying but came up short. All I can say at this point is
and

 

Wadhe say? Wadhe say?

 

As far as slabs go, are PCGS cert number look-ups any help in guarding against counterfeits if they copy the cert number of coins?

 

They don't hurt, and when possible, seeing photos of the genuine example certainly can be of immense help, but just because a cert shows this in no way guarantees the coin authentic. Unfortunately, using a correct cert (easily found, as just one example, on Heritage archives) on a fake slab and coin of the seemingly correct date/mint/type is commonplace.

 

Couldn't help but read up on this because it concerns me, being new to the coin collecting hobbie I'm terrified of making this mistake. But I do have a little experience with Chinese counterfeits. I work in the energy field for the utility company's and it looks like you guys are having the same problem we had about 5 years ago, not with coins but counterfeit bolts. It got so bad we couldn't tell a good bolt from a bad bolt, and when you have a high pressure steam turbine at 30 tons spinning at 3000 rpm, you need to know. My department is what's called NDT "Non-Destructive Testing" we test things without actually destroying the parts intended use. In short do you know if any company's have used Nuclear Analyzers to determine a materials make up. Every material responds differently "measurable difference" when exposed to a radioactive source, you may be able to use something like a XRF Analyzer made by Olympus to verify a coins material make up. Olympus has awesome customer service and most of the time all you half to do is call them maybe send them a known good coin and one counterfeit and they will let you know if it can be done. Just food for thought, we use one of these gauges in our shop and we haven't' had a problem in several years.

 

What do they charge for this service?

 

You know that's the catch, they are a vendor of ours so if we have a problem with something we hit'em up and they get back to us on it and normally doesn't cost us anything until we purchase the equipment from them. You know if it's something they can go to market with, they may do the the leg work for free. They are a bunch of science geeks anyway and love doing what they do, if you have a large business you would just half to call them up and see.

 

OMG..... I'm going to a coin show this Sunday, I really hope nothing like this gets into the mix of coins there because they look too good.

 

How much does a "NDT" machine cost?

 

There are many different methods of NDT, I'm not going to bore you with the details. But the XRF probe which is new to the world of NDT would probably cost around 20 K, if I where to guess. However I believe there was an article here on lead cores in gold coins? If that's the case Eddy Current could be used to detect a material that was not homogeneous, Eddy Current technology has been around for years you can pick up a small hand held probe for couple hundred dollars. Like I said earlier I'm new to coin collecting, never occurred to me to use NDT on coins, its main purpose was for the Aerospace, Energy, Oil & Gas industries. Going to a coin show this weekend, I have a friend I'm sure has a few counterfeits laying around, he keeps them to show folks just how easy you can be fooled. I'll look into to it.

 

Whenever I look at a coin, the first thing I examine is the denticles. They seems to be the hardest thing to fake, since it is near the edge, usually somewhat worn, and counterfeiters probably don't spend that much time trying to make them look right. The denticles on the fake are a dead giveaway given how perfectly formed they are.

 

I would totally agree with you a few years ago. Dentils are not so reliable on more recent copies as they were then.

 

The coin in the OP is a pretty good fake to my eyes. The most obvious problem I see is the poorly formed edge reeding. I don't see any problems with the dentils or the major design elements, although the surfaces look scrubbed in places.

 

The mint mark position is wrong. If I'm buying a semi key Morgan I'm figuring out what die pair it is first.

 

This coin was brought to my attention by a fellow member. He asked me to comment on what I saw. Here's my two bits. This is an obvious fake and the first thing that you want to do is just look at the overall appeal. This coin is lacking a lot of breast feathers, wing feathers and that would be my first tell. Not that there aren't Morgans with such lousy detail it is just that there are virtually no CC Morgans so poorly made.
The next is to put a loupe to the coin...I just use a 5x pocket loupe and that works just fine. Counterfeits are made by taking a real coin and then casting a copy, hardening it into a die and then striking new blanks with the cast produced die.
Casting involves the use of liquid metal and boy is that stuff hot! In so producing a new die the process of casting leaves tell tale cooling bubbles on the new "die". These are transferred to the new coin and show up as pimples or little bumps. Also when casting a new die, sometimes the metal does not flow properly and thus leaves out details that were on the original host coin...thus the lack of feathers as noted. Here's a look at the reverse with those "problems" circled. Enjoy.
bob

 

Thanks Bob!