The Chinese Counterfeit Drama Unfolding...

Great link Ben. By all means lets go to Bejing or peking or whatever it is now this summer and spend spend spend. you know thier government is making profits from all this counterfeiting. I mean It isnt Wang Lung and the other peasants reaping from it. Oh yea what a friend we have in China.

 

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Just as a reminder, the Chinese people as a whole are not doing this, just the crooks. They are all over, they are just worse in china at the moment but of course anyone who knows ancient knows that eastern Europe is more often the place they come from, or the middle east.

If guys in Bulgaria, china, or turkey can produce even a halfway deceptive fake that can fool a certain percentage of the collectors, then just think how well those counterfeiters in England or even the US and Canada can do with a little more money to work with, maybe even better tech.

Those were a lot of dies on the table...hard to tell what each one was, caught a few. Saw, at least, US and brit coins.

I saw one example of a fake quarter...it was awful and obvious to anyone it was fake but they do try. Most are not that dangerous to experts and well informed collectors...some are without doubt.

As for the forged slabs...couldnt care less as they are no different than a holder....just a holder with a label.

take a look at the ancients side of the fake story, just one of many photos

http://www.cachecoins.org/coins/4.jpg

 

Hey, Don't put down the Chinese (coins). We (our government) owe them countless Billions because they, along with Saudi Arabians, bought & own our Treasury bonds. We just have to wait until they call in the debt we owe them. Maybe they'll take counterfeit Russian $100 notes!! Or the purported Iranian fake currency.

Personally, I wouldn't mind owning a fake if I knew that it was clearly sold as a fake and priced accordingly. It'd be a great learning tool. Whenever I see a photo of a fake I capture it for future reference. I'd buy a fake ONLY at a tiny fraction of the real value as an example for later comparison.

Bruce

 

Yes I agree. It isnt the Chinese people who are doing it. It is the Chinese government. You think they dont know what is exactly going on in thier own country?

 

How exactly can you claim this is absolutely true? I would like to see some proof - with more than a billion people in China alone, name me a management system that you can manage one billion people. I can assure you - it's near impossible. All you need is one organization with less than 10 men to make millions of counterfeit coins.

 

You are right its the dirt poor farmer(how many of them do you think? 12? 405? 600,000,000?), you know, the guys who still use oxen and a plow that are doing all the counterfeiting as a hobby and a few extra yen. Or do you think with all the liberties the Chinese have its akin to living in Ohio? That kind of operation isnt hidden on some San pan. And for a tossle of thier hair and a kick in the pants, most of them would turn in thier own mother. But you are right. They are a great bunch of communists.

 

I tend to agree that china, like any other nation, has crooks...whether they be just plain crooks like the ones that INFEST the US...or ones that might be in a government...like the crooks you find in any government.

Somehow you got the idea that everyone in China is a dirt poor farmer or a corrupt government official...your problem is you just dont seem to have a clue about life and the people of china.

 

Well I dont see what difference it is whether they are that or well educated high salaried professionals. But what they arent, is taking a stand against an oppressive form of government. One guy standing up to a tank isnt going to rid them of communism. And somebody there is making fake coins to sell here. Would you feel better if it were lawyers? While I may not know as much about China as you presume to know about me, I do have a clue about it. l guess you think most of thier government officials are stand up guys. Except for the fact theyre communists.

 

What form of government they live under is of no concern to the issie. My point is that there are people counterfeiting EVERYWHERE. They just uncovered a huge counterfeiting ring in the UK that produced millions of pound coins (or notes, not sure). This one got caught, god knows how many others didnt. They cant catch them all, nor can China, albeit that is probably not the #1 concern of the Chinese government. They make fake coins all around the world and try to pawn them off. They make them in Egypt, Turkey, eastern Europe, Russia, Israel, France, UK, etc...etc...

Admittedly criminals in China are a big producers of all things fake but the people doing it are indeed criminals and if there are government people involved, certainly China does not corner the market on government corruption. On the whole the people are, like most, just like anywhere else...mostly honest, do not commit crimes, and work for a living...they just have a much bigger population thus a larger amounts of crooks You find these problems in emerging industrial nations. nuff said from me.

 

They invented movable type and you are calling China an emegring industrial nation? And yes, in the UK there are counterfeiters. Of pound notes! Please excuse me GDJMSP. But China is a communist country. Its not just my opinion.

 

I think there's a new thread where he's snagged a fantastic buffalo nickel error off e-bay - just not sure if it's "the real deal".....

 

Give me a break - if China is indeed communist, there wouldn't be any market for consumerable goods. Neither would they have the ability to supply goods to the US and the rest of the world but this obviously isn't the case. The market DOES NOT act like a communist market unless you are absolutely blind. There is no need for any bias reply if you can't be bothered to check what real China is with your own eyes, instead of referencing to sources that are 20+ years old.

Like it or not, it's us, the consumers that are pushing the labor market to the extremes - if we demand the price of consumerable products to be as low as possible, that's what you get - inferior products as well as poorly paid people somewhere in the world. In comparison, we numismatics are willing to pay hundreds of dollars or even thousands on coins. Don't you get the contrasting difference in the eyes of people who just earn a few cents per day?

 

Brother I cant even debate that. If you think China is not communist, then nothing will convince you. But earning a few cents a day..yea thats a free market.

 

If you have to go back to movable type to prove industrialization and modernization thats a big step. China is a balance of official soviet style communist and emerging free market. And yes, they are a nation emerging both in social modernization and industrial. As you have said yourself, a large amount of china is still living a basic agrarian lifestyle but in the larger population centers and certain cities the markets are relatively free and modern, some would say too free.

It has not been very long since they have started a real push to modernize and along the way they have been forced to accept (however slowly) the consequences of competing in a world market, this means heavy pressure to continue to give way to more free market systems and rights. We seem okay as long as we can still tap a cheap labor market.

but the issue is counterfeits and certainly the british pounds that were counterfeited, if not detected could be worth twice as much as a US dollar and be used anywhere they take a pound coin. in fact I just read this report which was interesting about the problem of counterfeiting in the so called free world:

During July 2003 a Treasury representative stated in a Parliamentary answer that analysis on a sample of one pound coins collected in late 2002, showed that approximately one percent were counterfeit. With the Royal Mint estimate of some 1410 million pound coins in circulation (2003–2004), it follows that approximately 14 million were counterfeit. There are two main types of one-pound counterfeits in circulation within the UK: the first comprise cast lead or tin based ‘coins’ coated with brass; the second are struck brass ‘coins’. The lead or tin variety can vary in quality but wear rapidly usually look, feel and sound completely wrong and are eventually identified by the banks and Post Office where they are withdrawn from circulation. Therefore the vast majority of counterfeit £1.00 coins currently in circulation are of the struck brass (or nickel–brass) form. Of these some will also be easy to detect if made of the wrong metal or details of the design look too crude and coarse. However, there is a particular struck counterfeit in circulation where the quality is such that bank sorting machines and tellers cannot identify these pieces. Both cast and struck counterfeit coinage is reviewed, along with a case study analysis of each method, attention being focused on the high quality struck nickel–brass copy.

Its all over the world is all I wanted to point out, not debate the nature of the Chinese government. Who knows what nations are faking US coins these days, and the new Euros are highly faked coins. It does take THAT much money to cast and then mint a coin if one can expect millions in return. Most Chinese are just ordinary law abiding citizens, these counterfeiters are, most likely, organized crime which is a still a problem everywhere.

 

I guess I just dont understand the ''love affair'' most Americans have with China.

 

Who?

Ribbit - Ribbit - Ribbit

 

All I can say about China. Well I dont know if I can say it here. But put it this way. The world would be better off with out them.

 

As far as I know, China is a communist government that embraces capitalism as long as it gets its piece of the pie...

 

Let's blame Wal-Mart