Matt's Counterfiet Gold Coin Thread

Hey Gang!

I wanted to start a post to chronicle the counterfiet gold coins we get through the shop. This is going to be a study in just how good the counterfeits are and what can be done with a camera to make them look deceiving. I can guarantee that every coin posted in this thread is going to be 100% unequivocally counterfiet. These coins are not for sale and are all going to be sent to my refiner and melted. As I see them I will post them here in this thread for everyone to see. I left the pictures nice and big so you can zoom in.

I'm going to start with a pair that crossed the counter this morning. They are on their way to the melting pot this afternoon but I wanted to show them here first. The $10 is not really all that good the details are very soft. The $20 is a better counterfiet. This piece could easily pass for a genuine piece to the novice collector. It does have some lumps and tooling on the reverse. There is some pitting in the field around the letters especially in "STATES" that give this one away.

Matt

 

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Got another pair this afternoon. Both of these coins show tooling in the neck and some light pitting in the fields. They both also show some weakness in the edge reeding in certain spots.

Matt

 

Thanks for sharing these coins with us. Being able to identify counterfeits is an important skill and I don't see enough of them [I think!] to be able to do it.

 

I'll sure try to post good pics of them as they come by me.

 

And please continue to describe why they are fakes. I am not sure on the 1908 I could see the pitting in states in the picture if you had not mentioned it.

 

Matt, thanks for posting those counterfeits. This is just a suggestion to use if you want. You could have an album set up on your profile with your fakes so that way you let us know on this forum and you also have them backed up in an album. Just an idea for easy reference so if anyone ask later on if their particular gold coin is fake you could say yeah I had one just like it and you can look at my album to see it. :thumb:

Another way is if staff make a sticky and we can just place any future counterfeits on there. just thinking out loud :whistle:

 

Wow, mat you are damn good. some of these on first glance I couldn't spot as counterfeit, which surprises me.

I didn't really notice the detail lost on the 10 dollar indian, I probably haven't seen enough of them to tell anyway. I'm sure if I put it by a geniune example I could see.

I see the tooling on the neck in the second 2.50 indian, and its color also appears off. The first indian there seems to be a better counterfeit than the second. I do not see any tooling in the neck on the first one.

These seem to be pretty good counterfeits to me, especially the first $2.50. You have a sharp eye my friend. I do not see any depressions on them but I do see lumps of metal and a tooling mark in the rays of the $20 (unless I'm seeing things)

I have not heard these 'pitting' you are talking about on struck pieces. I have only heard of this on cast counterfeits, what causes this on struck pieces and how do I spot it?

Btw matt keep it up, I love gold coins and I especially love studying counterfeits. This is my new favorite thread!
It really shows me how much little I know.....and how much I have to learn. If i can't spot the counterfeit on first glance, that's a problem for me.
I need to look at more genuine pieces.

 

The first $10 was relatively easy to spot as a fake. The rest of them would definitely have fooled me - although I don't study, collect, or follow gold all that much.

This thread seems tailor-made for you Kevin!

 

Im' going to look through some of my books for this pitting he is talking about..never heard about it before.

I imagine the details on the $10 piece are mushy and weak compared to a geniune coin (lost during the transfer process) but I just haven't seen enough of these geniune coins to tell at first glance.

This is going to be a great learning experience for me..

Matt, does the $10 indian it appears to have toolmarks between the letters on the reverse?

 

How do these match up on things like weight and metal content? Are they old counterfeits or modern jobs coming from other countries?

 

What is the metal content of the counterfeits? I am assuming since you are sending them to your refiner that they are being made from some level of gold content.

 

Art, These came out if a old collection I bought today so I assume they are some of the older foreign stuff.

As far as the weight I weighed the saint and it was actually .4 grams heavy. As of this evening it has been processed by my refiner and it was 89.96% pure. Thinking ahead I had asked them to do that particular piece in a separate melt assay so I could figure out the content. Basically they are 90%.

As for the pitting on the struck pieces I'm not quite sure what causes it. It is usually very light. It might have to do with the process they use to make the dies.

 

Here's a picture of the US $20 obverse with some things I Noticed on it.
I'm guessing that one soft, rounded depression is just that..a depression but sometimes
depressions look like contact marks.

 

Another key on that saint was the fact that the mark in the rays was raised if I remember right... It's a bubbling pile of molten metal now so I cant check it. Also some of the stars were mis shapen.

 

Education is the key to fighting fakes - posts like this are tantamount to educating the public about these things.

 

Matt at first I noticed the stars too, they looked fat and wrong. But then I overlooked it..

 

That one $2.50 indian is pretty good...only thing I could find on it. The other one not quite as good.

 

This raises a question in my mind, is it better to know inside and out a certain series of coins, the genuine article, or is it better to know a wide variety of counterfeits?

I would guess that to identify contemporary counterfeits it might be better to know those varieties, but that to identify modern counterfeits of classic coinage it would be better to have a sure grasp on the real items.

 

I hope this thread wasn't inspired by my gold coin thread...

 

As a general rule, you should know what both looks like. But the key here is, if you know what a genuine coin looks like, its details, its nuaises, down to a tee, anything that doesn't look like this is suspect.. An example of this would be color for a paticular year...some US gold coins have different colors, because such mints such as Dahnolega and other old mints put more silver into their coins, giving them a different hue. If you know your series well, anything less is suspect.

But also its important to know counterfeit diagnoses, knowing where to find tool marks, depressions and how to spot them and how they different from contact marks, weak/mushy details are all important.

Bill Fivaz has wrote a book on US counterfeit gold, and he focuses on what a counterfeit coin should look like. PCGS Guide to grading and counterfeit detection focuses on what a genuine coin should look like. Get both, you can't go wrong!:hammer: