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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Hobo, post: 402632, member: 11521&quot;]Kevin,</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I share your interest in counterfeit coins. I like all counterfeits but I especially like contemporary counterfeits. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I recently bought a contemporary counterfeit 1900-S $20 Liberty gold piece. To the trained eye this coin is an obvious fake but this coin saw a fair amount of circulation. I wish I knew who eventually figured out this coin was fake and took it out of circulation. Was it a bank teller? I&#039;ll never know.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This coin was created to fool a storekeeper, not a collector. It does not have the right color for a gold coin of that era because it is only about 50% gold instead of 90%. (That&#039;s how the counterfeiter made his money - by using only $11 worth of gold instead of about $19 worth.) It also has many of the indicators you look for on a counterfeit - mushy details, spikes, tool marks, raised lumps, etc. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This coin is a GREAT piece to use for education. Several collectors have chuckled looking at this coin because you really don&#039;t need a lot of training to spot its flaws. But a couple of non-collecting buddies that I showed the coin to over the weekend saw nothing whatsoever wrong with it. They were somewhat interested in what makes it a fake once I pointed out some of the counterfeiter&#039;s mistakes.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>You should consider taking the Detecting Counterfeit &amp; Altered US Coins course at ANA Summer Seminar. There you get around 28 hours of instruction and hands-on with the ANA counterfeit coin collection. You will probably learn much more than you did in the 8-hour course at the ANA show.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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