I am wondering, how can you differ a real coin from a coin made of a good gold, and hammered just the same way it was back in 5-16 centuary?
Coin collecting is like any other trade, business, hobby or way of life. To be good at it - you must have experience. No amount of book learning or study can teach you what you need to know to be good at anything. It all requires hands-on experience. And experience comes with time. But no matter how long you stay at it - you can never know it all. And the longer you stay at it - the more you find out just how much there is you have yet to learn. Being a counterfeiter of coins is the very same. There is always something that "you" don't know. And the things that you don't know will trip you up and your deception will be discovered.
I see why you are asking the question, but the truth is, just as you could conceivably counterfeit an old hammered style coin, you can also counterfeit a modern style coin as well. It is done all the time, and sometimes the end result is almost perfect (or, in some cases, absolutely perfect, but they would never be uncovered as forgeries, so we will never know about them). Here is a little anecdote to illustrate the point. I recently won a counterfeit British pound coin on ebay offered by a seller in the UK. So, I asked an English guy at work if he had a few pound coins he could sell me so I could pay for the auction. When I scrutinized the coins he gave me, I realized upon VERY CLOSE inspection that one of the coins was probably a forgery. After an hour or so of looking, comparing, etc. with a real coin of the same date, I realized that it was indeed a counterfeit. The only way I could tell was because I happened to have a coin of the same date and compared the edge lettering and saw the crudeness of the fake one. So, this coin was floating around as genuine, and I bought it off my friend to pay for a counterfeit pound, but the coin I was going to use as payment was fake as well. I think it as a two for one deal. I guarantee that 99.999999% of the people would never suspect that pound coin was fake, and if I did not already have a collection of fakes, I would not have known it either. It was minted just as a modern coin is minted, so it was only the sloppy edge letter formation that gave it away.
I can spot a fake £1 coin a mile off, it's all in the strike and the colour. I used to get them regularly.
I am sure that you have more experience with these than me, but based on my limited observations, the fakes are getting better. Some are lead or zinc that are plated with a brassy metal, and these stand out like a sore thumb, especially when the plating starts to wear off the high points. Even when the plating is all there, the color is far too dark. Then there are the ones that are solid, and based on the one I just discovered, the metal and minting are getting better. The overall detail is slightly fuzzy on this one, but the color is good. If this coin had floated around circulation for a few years, I think the detail would be a non-issue as wear and tear covered up any deficiencies. If you get them, you should hang onto them. There is a steady market on ebay for them. They usually go for a couple or a few pound each. My favorite ones are where the counterfeiters not only pair the wrong reverse design with the obverse date, but they also add an edge inscription that has nothing to do with either date/design. On my most recent fake, the edge lettering formation was the only tip-off.
The counterfeits are certainly getting better. At the ANA show held in Atlanta a few years back, I was permitted to see a Sacagawea Dollar believed to have been counterfeited by one of the small governments in South America. At the time, the coin had not been analyzed to determine the exact metal content, but it looked fabulous. The coin was off in weight just a little. Certainly not enough to tell by hand. Little die characteristics could be seen in the coin as the dies had been transferred from an original coin. This coin was obviously made to fool merchants more than collectors, but the point is that counterfeits are getting better and so is the equiptment to make them.
I have a small collection of these Sacky forgeries, made in Columbia for use in Ecuador. The first one I bought was quite good, but not perfect. Others I have since bought are of varying quality. The interesting part is that while I can identify some different “die varieties”, I can also confirm that two of them are from the same die. The one missing part is the clad layer on the edge. But, on a couple they got around this by painting a thin black stripe around the edge. It is meant to mimic the copper core when it gets darkened in circulation. I also have a series of fake one peso cons from Argentina. They range from poor to good quality, with some made from copy dies, and some made from totally new dies with a different type style than the original. South Africa also had a major problem with fake 5 rand coins, and even real amateurs were able to turn out good copies. This is because those coins have a large margin of blank planchet around the obverse and reverse designs. So, the whole planchet does not get struck, just the area in the middle. This eliminates issues with edge design, rims, etc. When the will is there to make an (almost) exact counterfeit, it is possible.
Some of the best counterfeits I have seen were the Platinum tenth ounce coins a couple of years back. On a quick glance, they were great copies. Many dealers bought and sold these coins during shows until someone finally took the time to weigh one of them. CoinWorld ran an article shortly after they made their appearence, and thankfully they left out the many dealer names who were fooled on these quality counterfeits.
Yep i've had wrong obverse and wrong edge lettering... Either for the date, or the reverse. So everything that could be wrong was wrong, i spent it.
"I also have a series of fake one peso cons from Argentina. They range from poor to good quality, with some made from copy dies, and some made from totally new dies with a different type style than the original." I lived in Argentina for 3,5 years , and even knew a guy who was forging them, and I never saw a good 1 peso fake. Some 50- centavos fakes were good enough, but still they were easily detectable. Some street vendours were taking them same way as real coins, knowing beforehand that they were fake.
Darn! I wish I knew you back then. I would love to get some fakes from the source – uncirculated counterfeits would be a rarity. Of the fake pesos I have, most are pretty bad. A couple are very good, but the tip-off was that they re-cut new dies from scratch. The quality was excellent, but they used the wrong lettering style – can spot is a mike away. I would love to get my hands on some of the 50c ones – never saw those on ebay.
