Featured An examination of the counterfeit slab epidemic. Scope and advice.

You two have moved the goalpost and are now focusing entirely on fake coins instead of fake slabs, which is what the OP brought up as the "epidemic". Pointing out the flood of fake coins does nothing to prove the OP's unfounded claims about an epidemic of fake slabs.

Of course you don't think they exist, because you don't have any facts (beyond anecdotal evidence and speculation) that supports the claim that fake slabs are an "epidemic". I've provided the fact that over 80,000,000 million coins have passed through the TPGs. Even if we estimate conservatively that half of them are regraded and/or crossed over, that's 40,000,000 genuine slabs out there for people to utilize. At 50,000 fake slabs out there, that's .00125. Fake slabs are a problem, but not at the level of fearmongering you have yourself admitted to using to get attention. You overreached on this, got called out on it, and instead of just stopping at admitting you are intentionally creating panic, you have attacked those who called you out, because your misleading claims "are for a good cause". Enough.

 

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The actual issue of counterfeits and what to really be on the look out for was lost long ago in this thread unfortunately.

 

For sure, every day their will be more fakes than the day before. That has always been true.

This is where you go wrong. It's not easily copied when you gave to get the slab right and the coin.

I'm not being dismissive of the premise, just the presentation

 

You two keep saying enough but just keep going like the energizer bunny- I am trying to get a handle on what you are trying to accomplish or add that's positive to this discussion but it escapes me. I just don't get it.

 

Most certifications do not come with photos so if the person who is buying the coin has to be an expert grader to know the lable matches the coin, what good are the slabs?, much less the TPG's?

 

Thank you for explaining the need for pictures.

 

Besides the single word that you have your panties in a twist about, everything I said was based on hard facts. Baseball has been unable to provide any hard facts to dispel those. Those are the facts that matter for this discussion.

If you think I wrote this to bring attention or notoriety to myself, you are wrong. I wrote this to bring attention to a problem that is getting very little attention otherwise.

And I have already said that there are too many unknowns, and that I would rather overestimate the problem than overestimate the problem because, either way, it is going to get quite noticeably worse. The more people who are aware of the problem and the loopholes, the better.

So what is the definition of an epidemic? 0.1% saturation? 1%? 90%? The CDC and WHO have called the novel coronavirus an epidemic, and its worldwide saturation level is on par (actually nearly two orders of magnitude less) with that of the (estimated) saturation level of fake slabs. You are making such a big deal about something, yet you have not even established your own standard for why it is such a big deal.

I don’t see any mass liquidation of slabs. TPG stock prices are not plummeting. No one is saying that they are going to stop buying coins or avoid PCGS. Where is this panic you speak of? Or are you guilty of exaggerating the issue to inflate your position for the sake of attention? Hm?

There was no intention of a panic, by the way. The only intention was to bring attention to a serious issue that can seriously impact the hobby. Your own attacks raise questions about your own intentions. Why would you be so nit-pickingly critical of a piece meant to help collectors? What are you trying to gain? How do you envision your rants helping the collecting community as a whole?

Same to you.

 

It’s really not that hard for slabs.

As I said if someone wants to be paranoid stick to PCGS gold shield and go with CAC as well for everything US (there’s other reasons to do that) but thats your safest slab by far.

 

I'm not nearly as worried with the fakes, both coins and slabs, that I can detect. It's knowing there are so many I can't detect even with fifty years of collecting experience. What chance do novices have?

 

Let's be clear, I called you out for the fearmongering effort you employed with the word epidemic, but if you think that's all you got wrong in your write up, you've severely overestimated your abilities, or at least your efforts.

The only "fact" you introduced in your "scope" was that fake slabs have been around since 2008. Or maybe it was 2007, since you don't actually know that information and had to guess. You failed to present a single "fact" regarding how many fake slabs exist. You failed to say how many are PCGS, or how many are NGC. You failed to present anything that helps quantify how much of the market this takes up, which slabs or coins are the most faked, or who is at the most risk from this. You failed to show anything regarding customers and their likelihood to come across a fake slab vs a real one. At no point in your scope did you do anything to elaborate the problem. I believe this is because you have so little facts to go on, you simply avoided them altogether.

As far as "facts" regarding PCGS, the only thing you have done is present the ones that support your narrative and bias. Why didn't you discuss their generations of holders? Their security measures on the slabs themselves? Why didn't you discuss how many coins they've certified? Why didn't you discuss the fact that PCGS Gold Shield photographs the coin? Anyone who buys a gold shield slab can do exactly the same thing you can with NGC and have a high resolution image for their coin. Why didn't you mention this at all? It certainly seems like a solution PCGS has to counterfeiting...

Regarding NGC, why didn't you show a single fake NGC holder? I think you intentionally only showed PCGS holders to push your agenda. When exactly did NGC switch to taking photographs of all coins? Where was that fact? Aren't all of the older coins slabbed by NGC and not photographed at risk? Why did NGC get a perfect pass on those millions of slabs that have been faked prior to implementing the photograph policy? Why didn't you mention that NGC only recently changed their database access and that up until just recently, you could data mine all of their coins? Why didn't you mention that tens of millions of certified NGC coins have likely already been data mined and are at risk?

I think the answer to why all this was ommitted is at best simple: laziness and confirmation bias. At worst, you intentionally wrote a hit piece on PCGS. You've admitted several times to conflating the problem to increase viewership. This article lacks significant amounts of information, it intentionally omits positive aspects of PCGS, and comes to a conclusion not supported, not only by what you presented, but by what you failed to present.


And for the record, I'm an NGC fan, and have only ever submitted coins to NGC and ANACS. I'm not pro-PCGS, just ask @baseball21 .

You'll also notice I'm absent from the US coins forum, precisely because I do not wish attention because of arguments. I was tired of the arguments, so I left. Interesting flex though, projecting your desire for attention onto me. The only reason I even saw this article was because it was featured on the homepage.
@GDJMSP and @desertgem I believe that featuring and encouraging shoddy efforts like this detract from the hobby and lower CT's reputation.

As to what readers gain from reading my critical questioning of your article, that's simple: they get the full truth so they can make informed decisions without being shepherded by someone who admits to misleading them from the beginning. They can learn about Gold shield from PCGS, or hear that NGC has millions of coins encapsulated that have no photos and thus no protection.

 

Assumptions to fit your narrative.

https://www.pcgs.com/news/counterfeit-pcgs-holders

People more intimately tied to the problem than I have claimed they showed up in 2007, but the earliest articles I have found dated from 2008. That’s why both dates are included.

We’ve been over this ad nauseam. Not worth my time to explain it to you again.

I will ask again, how many counterfeit Morgan Dollars are out there exactly? It is an impossible question to answer, and you know it. Same thing applies to counterfeit slabs, and you know it. Yet you keep asking.

I criticized NGC where criticism was due, and I praised PCGS where praise was due.

Because it is irrelevant. The problem spanned multiple generations of holders, and counterfeits exist of multiple generations of holders. And I did explicitly state that it is valuable to know what genuine holders look like, so I did not ignore the point that just studying the holder type will reveal many fakes.

I did.

Again, irrelevant

I explicitly did.

Did you even read the post, or did you see the title and the last sentence and concluded you got everything you needed to know about the topic?

I wanted to show a range of quality of counterfeit slabs, and I only had photographs of PCGS coins that spanned the whole spectra. That was negligent on my part. I have posted several counterfeit NGC slabs in the ensuing discussion.

In addition, fake PCGS slabs are more common than NGC slabs.

I asked around a few months ago, but I never got a straight answer. I am fairly certain that it was after the counterfeit slabs started coming out. Again, explicity mentioned.

Yes, and covered by the statement “if it cannot be photo verified, then seriously consider passing on the coin.” This statement was not about PCGS in particular.

They didn’t.

Because it wasn’t recent. It was several years ago.

Which you have barely added to and tried to seriously detract from.

Again, explicitly mentioned

It was also implicitly mentioned.

So when are you going to define your standard for what an “epidemic” is? We are all anxiously waiting....

 

I already did.

Edit: after re-reading your OP, and your most recent posts, it's very clear that you somehow believe that photographing a coin is the only true way to prevent counterfeiting. I find this ironic, since they're able to counterfeit coins to look like the real deal. I'm confused at how you think the photo will make it foolproof. Also, you've still yet to provide ANY sort of references beyond your own guesses as to the number of counterfeit slabs out there. Since you have no idea, you get to pretend it's millions. I don't buy it.

 

The BBB calls the sale of counterfeit goods online an “epidemic”, and that is certainly years in the making.

https://www.bbb.org/globalassets/lo...bb-study-of-counterfeit-goods-sold-online.pdf

Try again.

 

https://iccwbo.org/media-wall/news-...h-in-counterfeiting-losses-to-global-economy/

The “epidemic” took 5 years to grow 80% to what it is now.

2.5% of the goods in worldwide trade are counterfeit. If you want that metric to be used, then there would have to be 1 million to 1.75 million counterfeit slabs (based on 40 million and 70 million genuine slabs, respectively).

300000 compromised serial numbers with 5 examples each would fit in this definition. It is not an unreasonable estimate, but without a comprehensive and complete census of all compromised serial numbers, there is no way to tell for sure. That is slightly under 350 counterfeit slabs created around the world per day for 12 years. That’s high, but not unreasonable.

For comparison, if PCGS graded 2000000 coins in a year, that’s about 8000 coins per day accounting for weekends and holidays. 365 days a year would net about 5500 coins per day.

 

Great, someone else called something an epidemic because of 80% growth over five years. Doesn't suddenly mean it applies here, and if that's the only proper definition of an epidemic, I guess coronavirus isnt one. You get the point. I provided my definition for an epidemic and you're welcome to disagree with that, but it doesn't make either of us any more right, or more wrong. We simply end up disagreeing, because you're trying to say anything can be an epidemic, and if everything is, nothing is.

You still have zero data from any reliable source that can provide even an estimate on fake slabs. I reject your 2.5% because it is merely speculation and an effort to plug a one size fits all into something that doesnt work. First of all, that number is significantly higher than your previous guesses and you're only using it because you googled until you found two articles that used the word epidemic. You went from a few ten thousand to now over 1.5 million fake slabs??

Furthermore, you didn't even read the OECD study that article linked to, you just blindly quoted it. The summary bullet of 2.5% is misleading, and if you weren't so hasty, you'd have caught it. The 2.5% wasn't a physical comparison (as in 25 for every 1000 things are faked), but that the 2.5% is a percentagr of the global import values, half a trillion dollars. This is exactly what I'm talking about, where you just throw random stuff together and try to sound authoritative on the subject. 2.5% of mechanical pencils are not knock offs. It doesnt work that way.

Let's discuss some probabilities. Is it more likely that the average, beginner collector will run across a fake coin or a fake slab? Is it more likely they will come across a raw problem coin being represented as problem free or a fake slab? Is it more likely that a coin they look at in a genuine slab is real or fake? There are exceptions to the rule, but exceptions do not create new rules, they are accepted as exceptions.

I reject your conclusion that it is no longer safe to buy PCGS slabs, because you failed to articulate and demonstrate any sort of significant or measurable problem (to the contrary, you've admitted that the issue is not very large but someday could be). I reject it because you downplay security measures taken by PCGS, and overstate risks to buyers. The likelihood of buying a fake PCGS slab is not even close to the likelihood of buying a problem or counterfeit raw coin. Is there risk to buying a certified coin? Yes. Is that risk for PCGS bigger than NGC? I think you've made a solid case that it's a yes. Is that risk so large that we should be telling people it's not safe to buy PCGS slabs? Absolutely not, or at the least, you certainly haven't demonstrated that to be the case.

 

So, what you are saying is that you admit that I am not a fraud since an established and well-respected agency showed that my definition for “epidemic” might be legitimate?

It was to show what 2.5% saturation would look like. I never said it was fact. I only said it wasn’t unreasonable. I based that on the size of the Chinese counterfeiting operation, which was linked in the earlier discussion.

I stated that “few ten thousand” was a low end estimate and that it could be low by one or two orders of magnitude. There is no way to know. I think 1.5 million fake slabs is at the very top end of the estimate, and that it in reality is much lower.

Beginners are told to buy certified coins for authenticity and market acceptability reasons. They would be more inclined to buy a slab than a raw coin. If they are looking for deals on the internet, they are almost certainly at high risk of buying fake slabs, and they are more likely to commit to purchasing the slabbed fake than the raw fake.

However, fake raw coins are far more numerous than fake slabbed coins, so fake raw coins would be encountered more often.

I gave very specific circumstances. If the seller is not reputable/established, the slab cannot be photo-verified, and the buyer is not confident in their authentication abilities, then they should consider not buying the coin. You can probably agree with that. If it wasn’t clear in the original writing, I made it clear in the subsequent discussion.

Admittedly I should have also stated old-style NGC slabs were potentially dangerous as well.

 

I am enjoying the debate; I was reminded of the past and just hope it doesn't degrade into the Point-Counterpoint (or is it cointerpoint ) SNL skit where Jane Newman gives her reasonable and well spoken point, only to have Dan Ackroyd's counter start with "Jane, you ignorant blank"

Boy what they got away with back in the day!

 

I used to love SNL back in the days they were funny. I also liked Carson, but never warmed to his replacements. I think it was because they had a sense of humor rather than a sense of catastrophe.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here, .00125 is 0.125%. If I collected 100 slabbed coins my chances of having a fake is increased to 12.5%? Of the roughly 58,000 members of this forum, what is the chance that someone had one 5 years ago? What are the chances they have one now? What will the chances be 5 years from now?

 

There's a lot wrong here.

He's saying 0.125% of slabs are fake.

If you have 100 slabs (or rather, for every 100 slabs) it is still 0.125% meaning 0.125 slabs out of 100. 12.5% doesn't come into play here anywhere. I'm not sure where you came up with that from.

Having said that, this percentage would not apply to every person's coins, it is across the board for the entire population of slabs.

In reality, you're going to have many fake slabs in the hands of unscrupulous people knowingly waiting to unload them. You're going to have knowledgeable collectors with thousands of slabs and all of them genuine. Then you're going to have some clueless people who buy "great deals" and have all fake slabs. Etc..