Featured Modern counterfeit world coins... train your eyes, get your game up

RE John59
Can you show or prove to me that "they" fake slab??

Thank you.

A correction: the Vietnam 20 dong coins (1968) are Ni clad steel. I am collecting some data. at present so as to verify my suspicions. Also quite a few silver 1900 seated Liberty Indochina products seen.
Gary

 

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The problem with the book is that some of them are way too damn expensive and made on a limited edition. Half of the dealers do not carry books. Then some of them go out of print and you'll never find them again. So the question of buying the book before the coin sometimes doesn't work. Sometimes there are no books on the coins.

As for EBay, you have two types of counterfeit sellers. I'm simplifying it. You have the ones who say "fantasy coins" or whatever it may be and sell a low-grade to high-grade counterfeits from China. Everything in their description says 'fantasy', 'fake', nothing about it being real. And then you have the ones who are out there to screw people. I do not consider EBay the biggest problem. There are thousands of websites selling this stuff. Flea markets to shows, all over the place. It's a common occurrence now.

If the American government really wanted to stop this, they could stop the importing of coins from China. Look at all of the millions and millions of dollars spent hunting down the 1933 DE by the American government. Even with all that the counterfeits will always be out there. How to combat this problem? I really don't know. Maybe a little more publicizing of the problem and when American sellers sell this stuff, find them and it may help a little bit.

 

Take a look at the links provided. If you check for yourself, you will find more pictures of fake slabs. Do you know how to tell the difference between a real or counterfeit Vietnam or Indochina coins that you're looking at?

http://www.billscoins.us/index.php/en/2012-02-19-19-51-1
http://www.pcgs.com/News/Counterfeit-Pcgs-Holders
http://coinauctionshelp.com/Fake_Authentic_PCGS_Slabs.html#.VUUoPfDLCzk
http://coins.about.com/od/coingradi...s/PCGS-Fake-Slab-Diagnostics.htm#step-heading

 

I will try to create a list of do's and dont's and then supply images and XRF analysis of some typical examples. There is no 100% cure as these Chinese pieces are very well made using mint level equipment ... we can only save a large percentage of the numismatic community ...

 

You can also see thousands of them (mostly fake US coins in fake slabs) on the CoinForgeryEbay group's Flikr page https://www.flickr.com/photos/coinforgeryebay

 

I can somewhat agree to what you are saying John. However when you have buyers that throw their life savings on "investments", I really have to question their mentality. There was a seller that I remember, who bought literally more than 10,000 dollars in Chinese coins. Yes, I know, you would say it's the darn Chinese coins one is dealing with. His feedback checked out to be ok - dealt with some US coins that were sold for more than a few hundred dollars, if not up to four figures.

When i received it, this one was quite deceiving but it is a counterfeit. What gave it away was the weight and some minor details. I had to write a lengthy message to explain why it was a counterfeit. Obviously he thought I was trying to rip him off until I gave him a blunt explanation that a tael cannot be 27 grams. A standard Chinese silver coin struck in that era is around 27 grams and a tael is about 35 grams. This counterfeit is a tael however was struck on a wrong planchet which was on a standard planchet. In my opinion, this could have been avoided if the seller did a bit of research. Needless to say, I explained in details of why the rest of his collection were counterfeits which was not a pleasant thing to do.

As of the idea of getting the government to ban imports of coins - I don't think it's a feasible idea. At the same time, there's just way too much counterfeits out there - from T-shirts to handbags etc. How exactly can you propose getting custom officers to identify what is counterfeit through the mail? I will be honest and say that I am not an expert in identifying all kinds of goods. The most ideal solution is to shut down the counterfeit production chain, but obviously this is just too difficult with international laws.

If I recall correctly, I believe Minnesota started to regulate bullion sales due to frauds. Can anyone that is living in Minnesota say that this action is effective or it has caused more trouble than it is worth?

I agree that there's no one size solution to this. As much as I hate to admit, this is a losing battle. For now though, I believe we must continue to persevere and continue to reject the sales of counterfeits. If you get one, document it, share the experience and return it to the seller. If in doubt, ASK! Least I know numismat wouldn't bite

 

As to people buying for investments (stocks, bonds, real estate, silver/gold, coins) most of the investors depend on the advice from professionals and for you to get stuck with it it's a shame but you always have con-artists in every field.

The government fights counterfeiting everyday. Have you ever seen the customs in some of the airports especially on the west coast? Millions of boxes of counterfeit stuff that they confiscate everyday. Yes, they can confiscate counterfeit coins if they wanted to. They have the ability to do it. It just looks like they don't want to. There's no business that is hurt directly from the counterfeiting and very few governments get affected by it, as to coins.

I agree with you that we should reject the counterfeits. That would probably be the best way to help to a point with this problem. Too many collectors enjoy putting them in their albums. Counterfeiting will always be here, we all know that. We just have to try to minimize the loss to the hobby. If you get a starting collector that gets burnt with a counterfeit coin, we could lose that person and many more from the hobby.

 

Here is another example, but this time the listing includes an edge photo. Here you can see that although the obverse/reverse details are done well, the edge is somewhat poorly executed:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Germany-182...168?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c52051d40

 

NUMISMAT:
Thank you for the link. great resource.
GSDykes

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Japans-trad...987?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cf922fadb

These Japanese Meiji era yen and trade dollars are some of the best looking counterfeits on the market, but the weights are generally inconsistent. This listing gives the actual weight of the coin, at 0.4 grams under-weight, rather than the reference weight of a genuine coin or no weight at all, which is the norm.

 

This guy is pretty bold. He is showing the rim and the weight. Good post.

 

Thanks
And yet there are still 5 bidders willing to pay way more than novelty money for it.

 

Check out these top two here: http://www.ebay.com/sch/winmarbre/m...8df&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc

On the Augsburg thaler, see that major die crack across Ferdinand III's face? Someone would have been fired, if not imprisoned, for letting that one get out (if it was genuine, which it's not).





The French ecu is a more dangerous counterfeit. It looks like it was copied from an overstruck coin. The overstruck details can be a distraction for many collectors. This is one of the more convincing fakes. See this thread from 2012 on another forum, there are examples of both genuine pieces and the same copy showing the same over-strike characteristics (scroll down to the fifth post): http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=128393





Edit: I copied the ebay pictures so that the fakes can be seen after the ebay link goes dead.

 

Some more, including early Austrian thalers and Korean crowns

http://www.ebay.com/sch/ashlefreema...item1e9ee98740&rmvSB=true&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc

Edit: updated link to show completed items.

 

And all have bids on them and seller 0 feedback .I could see the bid for $2.00 but they want them good post

 

There always looks to be at least one shill bidder to get it to a "minimum" price that the seller wants. The odd part is that there usually appears to be more than one legitimate bidder going over the shill amount.

 

A lot think there get a bargain . Every day you see more fakes on Ebay

 

The toning looks good, how are they faking it.

 

Oh boy, look out now. We all "know" market acceptable toning can't be easily faked, right? People on here told me so. People on here wouldn't be wrong. They, they, they couldn't be..., or could they?

 

The toning is easily faked. If you look on this forum you'll find threads on toning.