There are many aspects of the hobby with which I am not familiar. One is about what people do when they have a piece they KNOW is a counterfeit. Has anyone here ever submitted a known fake to a grading company? I mean, not to confirm the authenticity (which is a big part of the service that a TPG provides, of course), but to purposely get the coin back in a body bag with the tag marked "Counterfeit?" Is this a thing at all? I know it's considered a waste of money by many, but do some people in the hobby actually collect "certified counterfeits," or more precisely, "(fake) coins in body bags?" Below is one somebody recently submitted and got back as a fake. The owner's not "collecting" fakes like I describe above, rather he IS trying to warn people about a certain group of sellers passing off these fakes of rare South Korean trial/pattern coins over at eBay.
No, but if I were I would likely do it with ICG for the obvious cost savings. I did submit one to them that came back counterfeit and the did bobybag the coin for me. The other thing about ICG is they are very responsive. Your reasoning is sound and I believe they would be happy to oblige if you told them what you were doing this for.
I haven't and I wouldn't spend money just to warn people on ebay. Ebay doesn't care about counterfeits. What interests me more are the ones a TPG certifies as genuine when they aren't. @Jack D. Young has found and published tons of these.
To clarify: The person who sent the example piece above believed the seller's item description that it was a genuine trial coin. The collector is assembling a world-coin year-set (1965), to include patterns and circulation strikes, all in graded holders. He didn't know it was fake. I am asking about whether people purposely sent in coins they ALREADY KNOW to be fake, in order to get them back in the body bag.
Can't say I see the point in spending money for someone to confirm what you already know. It would be another thing entirely if you think it's more likely than not that it's real, and you want confirmation of that fact; that seems worth the price of the service. Otherwise... just seems like a waste of time and money. As a warning to other collectors? Well what's to stop someone else from just taking it out of the "body bag" and passing it off as real again? Too expensive just to make a point you can make for free: caveat emptor (may the buyer beware). If you want to permanently keep someone else from being fooled by the counterfeit, destroy it or in some way permanently mark it as "copy" or "not genuine" or something of the sort. Or keep it in your collection to keep it from getting out in the world again. A "body bag" from a TPG is not permanent, because it can easily just be taken out of it. I've only had one coin I've ever submitted (to ANACS) come back as counterfeit; oddly it's a coin that would have been only worth about $15 if it was real, so I wonder why anyone bothered to fake it (practice maybe, or maybe it was just a copy, not properly stamped as such, but never meant to fool anyone). I still have it in my collection, labeled as a copy.
I sent in a submission batch to ANACS last year that had two trade dollars that I suspected. One came back bad and the other good but details.
