Hi all, I'm an American student conducting anthropological research in Myanmar and, though my research has nothing to do with numismatics, a friend there asked me to find out if 5 coins he has are real or fake. From what little I can glean reading about these coins, I think they are likely fakes. But I'm no expert! And I have no right to give him bad news unless I'm sure. I'm hoping that folks on this forum can help me. Please accept my apologies if I should be posting this somewhere else. Kind regards, m
Thanks for the fast response Jaelus. Can you point to what makes it so easy to conclude they are fake? I want to be able to explain to him why that's the conclusion. The ones purporting to be from 1804 are easy to assess I think--the spacing of the stars is not correct; and the gold one should be silver. I don't know what to say about the 1879 and the 1795 however... Thanks again.
You can pretty much sum it up with the designs. These are the crude early counterfeits that a quick glance by somebody that handles old coinage routinely can pick out from a mile away. Recent counterfeits have been getting much more believable. Simply the design aspect on these is quite crude.
This pretty much sums it up: It's not like there are one or two small things to pick up on. They are just all around crude copies. The whole thing is bad.
Details are a joke. Fake toning. Underweight. Not right silver color. No silver content. Try a magnet.
As mentioned, the designs are "approximations" or "cheap copies" of the real designs. The stars and dates are too far away from the edge, stars are wrong shape and location, numbers are wrong shape and location, the letters are wrong design, etc etc etc If you want to peruse the designs use the pictures on this website, the menu is on the left. https://www.usacoinbook.com/coins/5927/dollars/draped-bust/1804-P/all-varieties/
Multiple issues here. In terms of details, these all have 'mushy' design elements consistent with cast copies. Struck versions of these coins have clean and crisp design elements. The dates on most of these are not the correct font and are either not in the correct location or the correct size. On some, the denticles are not period correct either. If you want to give your friend some feedback you can start there, and then show him pictures from http://www.pcgscoinfacts.com/ Pay attention to the crispness of the strike and use right-brain recognition (the kind you use to recognize people) to compare, don't necessarily look for specific things like spacing of letters, etc.
oops. your' right by AMerica .. I corrected it (still looked a lot more authentic than the OPs coins)