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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 2897021, member: 112&quot;]Different people learn it at different times. But even in the 70&#039;s it wasn&#039;t anything new, far from it in fact. Learning that goes back at least a couple hundred years.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Well, don&#039;t bite all your nails off. You see, what he knows but failed to mention to you is that good counterfeits are identified by die diagnostics, not by weight, measurements, or specific gravity. That&#039;s because good counterfeits are made to original spec, right size, right weight, right fineness of metals. So all of those tests will only tell you that the coin is genuine, even though it is not.</p><p><br /></p><p>What a lot of folks also don&#039;t realize is that it&#039;s not just unscrupulous individuals who make counterfeits. Governments, government mints in fact, have often engaged in making counterfeit coins. And when you have the resources of a government it&#039;s not that hard to do. But even that is not something new, that practice also goes back hundreds of years. Which is why what I mentioned above has been well known for hundreds of years. Granted, well known is a relative term. No, it is not well known by the public at large but it is well known by people who know such things - experienced numismatists.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the 60&#039;s and 70&#039;s there were huge factories in the middle east turning out counterfeit gold coins, coins from many different countries all over the world. And some of these counterfeits were so good that even fooled the national mints in the country of origin. For example, counterfeit gold sovereigns were produced that even the Royal Mint could not identify as counterfeits. But experienced numismatists could - because of die diagnostics.</p><p><br /></p><p>As far back as the 1700&#039;s the Russian Royal Mint had an entire program dedicated to counterfeiting Netherlands gold ducats - and this program continued for almost 200 years ! It got so bad that the mint in the Netherlands actually stopped making gold ducats for a time. Eventually, due to diplomatic efforts the Russians quit and the Netherlands resumed minting their coins. And the quality of those counterfeits, well let&#039;s just say that they are so good that NGC, PCGS, ICG, and ANACS cannot identify them most of the time. There are countless counterfeit Netherland gold ducats in TPG slabs, labeled as genuine. And there are more being slabbed as genuine even today ! I can identify them using die diagnostics, a handful of others across the world can identify them, but most of those at the TPGs cannot identify them.</p><p><br /></p><p>And there are other coins from other countries that are much the same. Usually it is only someone who specializes in those specific coins who can identify them.</p><p><br /></p><p>So the perfect counterfeit ? Producing them is nothing new, and no it&#039;s not due to increases in technology. The technology to produce &quot;perfect counterfeits&quot; has existed for hundreds of years. And the counter to it - is knowledge, knowledge that is gained by experience.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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