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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jwt708, post: 2401563, member: 32619&quot;]Hello!</p><p><br /></p><p>Today I bring my first possible fake purchase and oddly enough it is a military trade token. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie9" alt=":eek:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /><img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie4" alt=":mad:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s the token:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]495010[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>I left the file large in case anyone wanted to zoom in.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s the story - I was on eBay and noticed this token. I&#039;ve never seen a $5 token from a Vietnam base before so I was immedatley interested and it was from an Air Base so it is right up my alley. The seller is from Vietnam which didn&#039;t raise any flags since...well Bien Hoa Air Base was in Vietnam.</p><p><br /></p><p>I won the auction and the token showed up. As soon as had the token in hand it didn&#039;t feel right. Hard to explain, but it was off. Look at the fields - there&#039;s almost a cross-hatch effect going on. I&#039;ve never seen that and I&#039;ve handled hundreds of tokens...maybe not hundreds of brass...but I own plenty. Both the fields and devices have holes in them. The black specs you see are holes in the metal with no accompanying corrosion or damage. I&#039;ve seen damaged and corroded tokens but not like this. It was as if the metal was never there.</p><p><br /></p><p>The rim is awfully strange. It has a very obvious seam all around, but the seam doesn&#039;t stick out but is recessed. You can see evidence of the weirdness of the rim on the obverse. I tried to take shots of the rim but gave up. There is also one spot on the rim that appears to have been recently filed exposing bright metal, where the rest has a older appearance.</p><p><br /></p><p>Speaking of appearance, this token exhibits no corrosion, at all. Just about every brass token I have has some corrosion. Fingerprints, spots, something. And many I&#039;ve seen for sale the last three years, from Vietnam, have exhibited some sort of corrosion. Weird. Also no luster or reflectivity at all, which are traits just about every other token I own has.</p><p><br /></p><p>Finally, Cunningham doesn&#039;t record a $5 token for Bien Hoa from the enlisted clubs but does record one from the officer&#039;s club though it&#039;s in aluminum and of a completely different style. This token does match the VN240 series but all of those are aluminum. </p><p><br /></p><p>Now this is not the same as finding a US coin unlisted in the Red Book. There are plenty of military tokens unlisted in Cunningham, and I have several. I have unlisted denominations, tokens in unlisted metals, etc. So just because something isn&#039;t listed doesn&#039;t mean it didn&#039;t exist.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now for those who haven&#039;t clicked away...military tokens come in a variety of sizes and compositions. For what it&#039;s worth, the only other round $5 tokens I have, the Bien Hoa&nbsp; is over a gram lighter and about 2 mm smaller than the others. Here is one from Offutt AFB:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]495018[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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