I saw this lot of Fake Peace Dollars today: You can see the auction here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/365893295375 The seller even shows the individual coins on a scale where the coins are under weight. I'm trying to draw attention to this to help others.
Looking at them, I don't really see any indications of them being counterfeit. Then again, by no means an expert on the subject. Where I do see a concern is the weights of 24 grams when they should be 26.7, clearly out of tolerance even for wear.
They all look absolutely fake. There is no silver patina at all. The designs are mushy and the toning/patina is exactly the same on all of them. These look like bad Chinese fakes.
I can spot those from a 100 yards! No need to even see the reverse. These all have the "Chinese patina".
Then this is an excellent educational opportunity for you. That "toning" pattern can exist on real coins, and counterfeits can fail to display it. But an awful lot of counterfeits are colored exactly that way. And, yes, 11% weight loss is basically impossible. Any real coin with that weight would either have been struck on a planchet so thin that the design wouldn't have been fully struck up, or would be worn so heavily that you couldn't even see a date. (I've seen >10% weight loss on minor coins, but never on a silver dollar.)
There now likely more fake peace and morgan dollars than there are real ones. Never underestimate the ignorance of the "general public". They won't know until they or their heirs take it to a pawn shop and find out they're worthless. In the meantime, they leave positive ebay feedback! hahahahahaha
This past year, I have seen more fakes than ever before and they were in the hands of non collectors. Just average folks having lunch at local bars. They bring me things to look at all the time. I'm pretty good at letting folks down in a nice way. Most already have the feeling that they have a fake. Not often but sometimes they will bring me something really cool and it's always fun giving them good news.
Same. Barber dimes, (great functional design if ugly), seem to be poster children for this >10% loss in AG. People think coins lose a lot of weight with wear, but its more "smooshing" the metal flat and not loss of metal until the wear gets to the very extreme. However its a surface to mass issue. The thicker the coin the less % of metal can be lost to wear effectively.
Honestly sir, its a great example of why you always need to check out sellers other listings. Most fake sellers give themselves away when looking at all coins they have for sale. Usually they have the same patina. I have seen some fakes look relatively good by themselves, (without being able to see the coin in person), but when you look at their other listings you see all of them look the same, an almost impossible task for real coins. This seller made it easy for you by showing three all together. That, and a couple of design points I won't get into online, and my eye knew they were fake within a fraction of a second. Advice? Spend most of your time looking at good auction sites with authentic coins. The danger of Ebay is with so many fakes your eye becomes desensitized to them. If you cannot see very quickly these are fake then Ebay is not a good venue for you yet sir. No offense, trying to save you from some bad purchases. Every time I venture onto Ebay, (not often anymore), I see mostly fakes or massively overpriced items.
More advice - once you've noted the typical counterfeit "look", examine the date. The dates on these confirm they're fake. Counterfeiters typically make one obverse die or hub, remove all or part of the date, then make a bunch of dies with missing digits and put various dates on those. The added digits typically look bogus even at a glance. Then they use the same reverse die for all of them. Why not? The reverse never changes, right? Look at the reverses on these three and see if you can immediately tell that they all came from the same die. This seller made it so obvious by listing all three.
A few days ago I saw the worst looking fake Morgan I've ever seen. I should have saved the images, it was ridiculous. But we've had so many similar threads I didn't want to bore anyone. Looking back, I should have saved it for this thread alone.
