This puppy came back in a body bag. Fooled a dealer who sold it to another dealer. He sent it to a TPG. Got his $ back from dealer #1 but didn’t give back the piece. Comments requested
One look told me that it is a counterfeit. The relief on the reverse is all wrong with the eagle’s body way too high off the surface of the coin. The design is also missing the deepest parts of the details which are most often lost when a less than great counterfeiter makes a second rate copy. The date, “1921” is also much stronger than the rest of the obverse. That tells me that the clandestine China (probably) mint has this design ready made and just added dates to it as needed. It’s sad, but not surprising that a couple of dealers would be fooled by this. Some years ago, one of the Coin World editors took a group of Chinese counterfeits out to the floor of the Winter FUN show to see if any of the dealers would buy them as genuine. Unfortunately she found a fair number of takers. Unfortunately some dealers don’t know their business as well as they should.
The weakness of the reverse lettering (especially United States of America) and the odd strength of the date, as you mention, were the two things that first jumped out at me.
They usually do. However, it is usually vague: Cleaned, Repaired, Scratched, Hairlines, Counterfeit....etc. They don't explain why they ruled it so, but they will usually tell you what the main problem was.
Here's one I found recently with those bubbles.. https://www.cointalk.com/threads/know-anything-about-counterfeit-coins.353456/#post-4000583
I would've written off the divots as corrosion (a good excuse for a harsh cleaning). The things that bugged me most on first glance were the date, the exaggerated relief, and the funky rim (fat, with finning?) from 2 to 6 on the obverse. If it were cast, I'd expect the edge to be terrible, and I'd expect it to fool not even one dealer.
My gut said it isn’t Chinese. I believe it to be a cast made from mould created using a genuine coin. And the mould was probably “enhanced” to make the cast appear sharper. Few take the time to look at the edge anymore...
