It seems that not only China is a major provider of faked coins but some other countries are in this game too. Recently in another forum is was reported that German WWI occupation money in the denominations of 1 to 3 Kopeks is being faked in Russia. What makes the situation worse is that the fakes have supposedly been graded by both PCGS and NGC. the original post can be found here (I'm not the author): http://www.coinpeople.com/index.php...t-iron-123-kopecks-1916-pcgs-beware-of-fakes/ Considering the blind trust some people seem to have towards the TPGs and others that acquired said coins from ebay recently, this could be of some relevance to the users of this forum.
That's true. It's just that it takes on another quality if the graders ('experts' for that matter) white wash a fake by authentificating it. A slab can be changed to make it more secure, but the methodology used by the people working for the TPGs isn't something you can easily replace. If the graders don't know what they do, then what use does is have to accept them?
The Polish seller made his clientele very happy. SUPER SELLER A++. To much of a good thing.......... A mean, how many of MS 66 1916 Kopeks can one person have?
When it comes to the TPGs making mistakes and slabbing a counterfeit coin as being genuine, it happens more often with coins of other countries than it does with US coins. There have been several threads here on CT where I have identified examples of the TPGs slabbing Netherlands ducats as being genuine when they were actually counterfeits made by the Russian mint. The coins were always of the correct weight & fineness, but they were counterfeits just the same. And it is easily proved if you know the diagnostics. Of course if you don't know them, and not many do, well, you see the problem - fakes are slabbed as genuine. The Russian government intentionally counterfeited Netherlands ducats for over a century. It finally got to the point in 1849 that the Netherlands government stopped minting ducats themselves (for a time) in order to stop the Russians from counterfeiting their coins.
i say my word 1. Mistakes do happen . 2. You cant fool NGC & PCGS at same time ! 3. those are occupation coins made of iron , what is the point to send bunch of fake coins to best major TPGs and risk so much ?? You say good fakes , more likely those coins been storage in some secret bunker somewhere in Germany or EX occ. countries who knows , but i dont see ANY point risk with over 400 coins to send them PCGS OR NGC 23$ per coin thats about 10,000 + american dollars + to make these coins , too much to risk
Some of the best fakes were of European origin before the Chinese stepped up their game in recent years. There are also cases where original dies make it into the hands of a few unsavory individuals, are refurbished and used to strike more coins. This happens in an official capacity all the time, but sometimes unofficially in an attempt to pass restrikes as genuine originals. As for the Russian occupation coins, the design is simple enough as to making identical dies would be pretty easy.
Thanks for the information. I have 1 , 2 , 3 Kopeeks of 1916 , bought in the 1990's , listed here : http://giladzuckerman.webs.com/mercuguinness.html#POLAND now I know that it is risky to search all mint marks to complete 2 mintmarks A and J for each denomination , because now fake coins of those types exist in the market.
Hey Gilad, you don't have to worry much about the typical circulated examples with rust spots. The fakes we have been seeing are high end and lustrous mint state examples. These coins are not worth faking in average circulated grades.
Thanks , as a method , when I know about fakes , I prefer to get circulated coins , because brilliant coins that should be old , cause me to suspect about their origin.
It's true with one "but" - Russian counterfeits of the Dutch ducats were minted until 1868, not because, but despite the fact that the Netherlands government stopped minting ducats themselves in 1849. Russians stopped minting Dutch ducats in 1868 after a formal protest of the Dutch government. That's why so many St Petersburg ducats were minted with the date of 1849 (they were minted in 1849-1868 with the date of 1849). The Netherlands started minting ducats again in 1872.
I've seen at least a hundred of wrongfully slabbed gold ducats (I am talking about the Netherlands ducats only). Well, mixing St Petersburg forgeries and Utrecht genuine ducats it's not the only problem. NGC and PCGS used to mix also provinces, it usually change the rarity of graded coin.
