so went to the yearly coin show today in Louisville here.....bought some pandas from a Cambodian couple from Fort Wayne, Indiana, 2-3 hours up the road. (2) 2009's, (2)2011's and (2) 2012's. I have two adopted girls from China and have been picking them up to go back to their birthdays of 2005 and 2009. When I got them home today, I decided to check the weight out on them and each of the six weighed 1.2 ounces outside of the airtite. I had also bought a single 2014 from another seller that weighed exactly 1.0 ounce. The six I'd bought looked good but they obviously weren't. I went back and asked for my money back which, to the dealers benefit, he did give me. The price for the (6) was $262. I feel pretty confident that authentic sovereign coins should not weigh 20% more than what they should. For anyone that knows about Pandas, am I safe in these assumptions?
There are a lot of fake Pandas around. I realised that I had one and got a refund so I have a feeling that the seller had a fair idea they were fake and refunded to save issues.
Yeah...I felt the same way today. Guess I'll just do the APMEX and large dealer thing or move to graded....
Do you think that the seller will just try to sell them to another buyer? I have noticed quit a few fake Seated and Trade Dollars on Ebay
Pandas are simply BRUTAL OP. Unless you trust the seller like APMEX buy them slabbed for the older ones. They are even striking them on pure silver planchets, so you are lucky you got lower quality ones more easily found out. I simply cannot think of a more counterfeited coin out there than pandas unless its early 20th century chinese coins.
As for the OPs question, no they shouldn't be that far out of tolerance. You did good by returning them.
People just parrot what they hear on hear.....People in China don't counterfeit Panda's because it's counterfeiting their own money and carry very severe penalties, it's a much lower risk to counterfeit money from other countries if your within China's boarders. This site has an extreme bias towards American coins and always claim Panda's are counterfeit and Maple Leafs have milk spots.....go to a coin site with a more diverse membership and you'll quickly learn counterfeit coins come in all forms and milk spots are on ASEs just as frequent as ML's
I've seen an awful lot of YouTube vids made by people who stack silver or collect RCM issues showing horrible spotting on RCM products. Often these stackers/collectors are Canadian. I have never heard anyone suggest that maples and other RCM coins are not utterly notorious for spotting, and that the issue is far less frequent in US coins.
Please ask a panda collector about the level of fakes in the series before assuming people are misinformed, racist, whatever. A good friend of mine is Chinese and an panda collector, and he is where I hear most about the level of fakes in the series. For full disclosure my wife is Asian and I collect ancient coins, so I find it hard to swallow I have a US coin bias or I am racist in some way.
Well, I have no bias towards any coins. My two daughters, FROM CHINA, are the reason I'm collecting them for them. They're counterfeited SOMEWHERE if not in China....maybe somewhere else in Asia but everything else is counterfeited in China....software, movies, purses, pens, clothes, tablets, etc, etc, etc. I speak from firsthand knowledge as I bought many of them in China on our last adoption trip. I wasn't collecting bullion then, so I wasn't looking for silver pandas. I was fortunate that I weighed them and that the sellers gave me my money back. He also had tons of 1/10, 1/4 and 1 ounce gold pandas as well. And he had some trade dollars. He also had a ton of silver rounds. And I have no idea if he was going to sell them to anyone else. He had 2-5 or more of each panda from 2008 to 2015. I only bought the ones I needed back to 2009. When I told him they weighed 1.2 ounces, he told me I had to take them out of the air tites. I told him I had and he said they couldn't be fake. I told him there was no way they would weigh 1.2 ounces. They weren't even good fakes. Although they looked good. I did tell the people running the show of my plight and that I had gotten my money back, so that was at least good. Told them I was concerned they would be resold and that was why I was telling them. Don't know what happened from there.
Hey man, I LOVE the fact that you're collecting these for your daughters! It sounds like the seller made it right? Well, that's great! My only suggestion is to stick to someone trusted or buy from one of the big companies. I have a son and hope to pass along my collection to him one day - and both of us want our kids to get good coins and not have to deal with fakes or problems. Best of luck! Don't be shy - post some pictures of those Pandas.
I'm a Panda collector (gold fractionals and one ounce silver rounds). American (USA) isn't a race and in no way did I claim anyone was a bigot....What I did do was make a generalization about the collective membership of this site in comparison to other coin/bullion sites. Sorry you took it so personal.
I thought the conversation was about fake Pandas? My only point was this site perpetuates the myth of how rampant fake Chines Pandas are in comparison to other coins and where they're made. Anyone with any knowlage of Pandas can spot a fake. It seems the thread starter is the only one here with a first hand encounter with a fake and all it took was a scale to figure out they had one.
I don't think that's a myth at all. China's laws make bootlegging and selling of fakes easier... you could go on Alibaba at one point and find fake bullion being sold in bulk (maybe it's still there; haven't checked). I'd never buy bullion out of China, whether pandas or anything else. That's not a bias, that's a response to their laws (or lack of enforcement).
>>China's laws make bootlegging and selling of fakes easier. Please quote the law about counterfeiting the yuan in China.....We're not talking about a purse, pair of shoes or even a 19th century American silver dollar....A very common thing on counterfeit Pandas made is the yuan value being left off, if you buy one without a face value on it, it's your own fault.
