Thanks to Bryan1315 from another forum who provides the results of his conversation with a person in China who made coins. This is his report. "I contacted him to see how many different types of coins he had available and of what dates and well I was a little surprised at just how many different ones he has copies of. He sent me two links both with quite a few different types and dates (something like 45 pages worth on one link with 10 coins per page)not all US coins and most of the ones I saw looked awful good as far as design, so if they ever get the planchets down this is going to be a major problem" http://www.bubbleshare.com/users/profile/305237 http://www.bubbleshare.com/users/profile/305281 In a few years, I might not feel safe about a purchase unless it comes from a Mint and that would be horrible for coin collecting.
How many people think ebay will actually do something about these sellers. There are literally thousands of them. I would venture to say there are as many fake as there are genuine trade dollars.
dont take this the wrong way but professional and serious ( read expensive ) buying is not done on ebay. however a lot of less knowledgeable will get conned as they do today
The Chinese are getting better and better at copying coins, and they are learning and incorporating the key diagnostics. So what do you do? Only buy slabbed coins? The Chinese are getting better and better at copying slabs. So now you need the slabs authenticated. Easy. An expanded CAC. They will not only tell you which slabbed coins are correctly graded, but which slabs are authentic. Oops, wait. Counterfeit CAC stickers. So then you need to authenticate ... oh, nevermind.
only buy PCGS/NGC coins if you are throwing in a 4 fig sum and above or are an SME. The grade well i have been having nightmares about PCGS and NGC and NGC has also slabbed certain fake foreign coins but thankfully they are good as far as us coins go. now if you start asking what happens if the coins are chines then i will say and $ best of luck you will need it
Good point. The only thing that worries me is that someone will knowingly pass these off at a coin show as real issues.
This is what I've been saying all along. Some believe it won't be a problem because we've dealt with counterfeits since the beginning of time. Somehow I don't believe the hobby was dealing with counterfeits to this magnitude in the 50's. You have to question every simple dime and quarter you look at now. The grading companies aren't super human either. It wouldn't surprise me if a good fake were to get through. They aren't doing analysis on every coin coming through. They'll weed out the obvious and the decent copies. The good ones, I bet comes down to a percentage that get through. I'd just about bank on it.
Ebay doesn't do anything about them now! Search for a replica coin. Any coin! Even the most common. You'll fine one on there and look how good some of them are. People say they're sending them from China automatically without the replica or copy stamps on them. Even if you don't ask. Look how good many of them are. These people could be caught. They won't do it though. I predict this will be very bad for the hobby as time goes on. Nobody realizes how bad it is yet and of course nobody is doing anything about it. You and I can avoid these jerks like the plague all we want. All it takes is a few greedy sellers in this country to order hoards of them for pennies on the dollar and start selling them as real. It's already going on, I'm sure.
I'm not too worried about the e-bay ones. There is a paper trail a mile long on those. It's the hidden transactions that are potentially more insidious. And, how do you know that "nothing" is being done? Do you get copies of all the memos?
Actually, there are probably far more fakes than genuine examples. Counting only the ones I have seen in hand, excluding EBay, Overstock, Amazon, etc. sales, I have seen at least two dozen fakes, 2 genuine, and one probable but not proven fake. Very sad.
You are 100% correct. I've flagged one coin on ebay by a seller known to sell fakes. I never got a response back. I'm not trying to be a tattle-tale about it, I'm simply trying to protect the hobby. I also would never buy a key date coin on ebay either.
Although I agree, some of those are good. I don't feel this one will be tricking anyone anytime soon.
Remember that the Chinese are copying just about everything now. I have seen some pretty decent fake buffalo nickels on eBay. I don't think there are any out there that will fool the tpg's- yet- but inspect every purchase carefully.
