Looking for Info on US & European Counterfeit Coins from Lebanon

I was curious about Middle Eastern counterfeit gold coins. I read a lot of rumors about them but have never found anything specific.

Does anybody know who produced them, what they were for, or have any related articles or books about them? All I've heard is that they were produced in the Middle East/Lebanon sometime after WW2 up until the 1980s.

US gold coins and European gold coins were faked, but don't know details. Some people say it was related to gold transactions for British Intelligence operations, others say for the tourist market.

Any information would be appreciated. I feel like I'm chasing a ghost.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

No information at all to offer here, but I'll be very interested to read whatever anyone else can provide.

 

I know how you feel, Lev. I've chased the subject online to the limit of my patience and while it seems to be something "everybody knows" about, I've never seen anything close to a primary source. Which could just be faulty googling, of course. And I’m not questioning the received wisdom at all - just saying it would be interesting to dig deeper.

I'm tempted to get the Dieffenbacher book that Doug mentioned (there are a couple used at Amazon right now). Then again, on my budget counterfeit gold is only a hypothetical worry.

 

Dieffenbacher shows diagnostics on some of the various counterfeits but doesn't really go into where they were produced. It also only shows a couple examples from each country. For example I believe it only shows two or three counterfeit US coins (It's been awhile since I last looked at my copy.)

 

Good to know on the Dieffenbacher book. More than what I had so good to know that book exists, even if it maybe only has diagnostics. Have to check it out.

Trying to learn about counterfeits too, so it's all good on sources.

@GDJMSP I checked out your google links. There was a Coinweek article in one of them that said the US gold coins were produced for commerce in the middle east, since the dates were common and one of them had a merchant "proof" stamp. It's odd that counterfeiters went through the trouble of making US coins of same size and weight, just for everyday use in their markets. I figured they'd use their own local currencies, but maybe they had a lot of trouble back in the 60's and 70's.

 

GDJMSP you're probably right. I never heard the ducat stories of legitimately copying another coin due to it's popularity and acceptance. Very interesting.

 

Hah! That's amazing.

 

There seems to be some controversy around the idea, but there's at least a school of thought that says 18th century Spanish colonial 8 reales (another coin that approached the status of an international currency) were counterfeited in England with the approval of the government. I'm off my turf here, but it's a frequent topic in the World section at one of the other coin forums.

 

The "Lebanon" fakes were all over 47th Street in New York in the late 70s. In addition to Diamonds, there is a lot of gold sold.

At the time, everybody wanted coins for jewelry - including matched pairs for earrings ($1 and $2.50) with a $5 or $10 for the necklace. I have a pair that my grandfather bought there at the time and I think tested out in the 17kt range.

The coins were reportedly made from melted down jewelry so ranged up to 18kt (depended on the run of the pot).

 

Here's a 1920 Jubilees sovereign. Argghhh The obverse didn't post. I'll try again.

 

Here's the obverse:

 

I give up

 

In my memory of what I heard about the history and chronology of the Lebanese gold merchants. They first began making their excess gold into copies of popular gold coins. The earliest products they made were better quality fineness than the real coins. They either decided to copy rare dates, were requested to make rare dates or just noticed that the rare dates sold easier or better than the common dates. The Maria Terresa thalers were accepted all over the world and were copied all over the world many with the same date no matter when they were made. The Lebanese were just following that path to acceptance of their product at the start.
I don't know if their modern products are debased value. People pursuing this research should start with the scholarly texts.

 

Back when the Hunt brothers ran the silver and gold prices up to new highs, I was selling off my $20 gold pieces to a local dealer. One day he told me that two of the last batch I sold him were Lebanese counterfeits. I said I'd take them back; he said, Too late, they are already in the melting pot at some refiner. They were correct weight and fineness, so he didn't care if they were fakes!

 

Wow. Never realized they were that common. Really good to know.

 

There must have been a lot of coins made because it seems to be common knowledge, but crazy nothing was ever recorded by camera or investigation by some foreign government or newspaper staff.

Maybe they were included in an old coin world at the time, but was just lost, or maybe in some old newspaper that went out of business or in a different language. Hard to imagine.

Production figures in the tens of thousands or millions of counterfeits kind of boggles my mind. I believe the motive for making them (popularity/ commonly accepted), but the scale of manufacture is almost unbelievable.

I’d be curious how many the 3rd party grading companies have run across over the years and if they have a population report on fakes of these things.

Definitely interesting.