Hi all, A few days ago I was cashing in on my metal detecting coin finds at a Coinstar Machine and this little fellow kept getting spit out into the reject bin... Why?... Because it's fake! No Reeding
I have one of these. At first I thought I was out a quarter, and then I realized this was so much better.
Interesting. I wonder what the reason for making them was. Actually counterfeiting or something else?
When I was young, I used to make those out of pot metal using rubber mold spinning machines. They worked great in vending machines. That date is later than I was making them, so you can't blame me for that one.
Back in about 1998 I read an article in Coin World about 1982-dated counterfeit quarters being circulated. The example that was pictured was more sophisticated than the ones shown in this thread. I suppose if one has the skill and means to produce enough of them without it being immediately obvious that they're fake it can be a profitable and lucrative venture.
If you make a million of them in China or North Korea at a cost of 2 cents each, there's a $230,000 profit, if they are able to be spent. The machines today will reject it (the size is correct and the weight is close) for being the wrong metal. So either they are being used in some mechanical machine where the size is not rejected, or they are being spent in commerce some how. Perhaps in a country that uses the US dollar as an alternate or black market currency.
Digging up a counterfeit common quarter while metal detecting. That’s just the ultimate cruel find.... If the oddity of the thing wasn’t so cool.
