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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tom Maringer, post: 242607, member: 7033&quot;]Hi Tjenkins!</p><p><br /></p><p>Good call to use the flip test to see if the coin &quot;rings true&quot;! It was the most common simple test and the phrase &quot;rings true&quot; continues in our popular language with very few people even knowing what it means anymore. (since no modern coins ring true!). </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve done something of a study on the midwestern counterfeiting schemes of the 19th century. It turns out that there are any number of alleged sites where such activities took place, and I just happen to know of one which is right here in the Ozark hills near my home. I first heard of &quot;Counterfeit Cave&quot; while teaching natural science to 5th graders at an historic site in Madison County Arkansas.&nbsp; (I&#039;ve put the whole story on a webpage at </p><p><a href="http://www.shirepost.com/ONSC.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.shirepost.com/ONSC.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.shirepost.com/ONSC.html</a></p><p>so I won&#039;t have to copy and paste a lot of text)</p><p><br /></p><p>The short of it is that zinc is a silvery white metal that is found in near-surface deposits in limestone beds across the central US from Arkansas and Missouri to Tenessee and Kentucky.&nbsp; Zinc is easily smelted from the ore, and though it is a component of brass, it was not discovered as a separate metal until the late 1700s. In the early 1800s zinc was referred to in this area as &quot;Ozark Silver&quot; and was being commonly used to counterfeit coins. I believe that several of the &quot;legendary&quot; coins of US history, (the Yoachum Dollar, the Sprinkle Dollar, and the Bear Hollow Dollar for instance) are in fact cases in which counterfeiters were faking either US or Mexican silver coins. </p><p><br /></p><p>Zinc melts easily at a low temperature, and is very soft when warm (warm being like 250 to 300 degrees F). It would be a relatively simple thing to clone molds either by casting or hobbing soft metal or even clay against an authentic coin, and then using the molds to cast copies. The copies would be poor quality of course, not expected to fool a collecor, but might pass at the local store or saloon if the proprietor was busy. </p><p><br /></p><p>Here in NW Arkansas there are many zinc deposits that are not rich enough to mine for zinc (which is cheap) but which would yield quite enough metal to use for a counterfeiting operation where the metal could pass as silver. </p><p><br /></p><p>As a coinmaker I purchase silver regularly, and I have even had a bar of metal offered to me, stamped .999 silver, which turned out to be zinc! So the practice continues to this day!. </p><p><br /></p><p>By the way, I&#039;m always interested in obtaining examples of period base-metal fakes so that I can document the precise alloy that was being used. Silver dissolves easily in molten Zinc, and will increase its hardness and &#039;ring&#039; properties.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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