Stabbed Coins and the Coin Album Dilemma

So, I have the CAPS Album 1800's type set and overtime I intend to fill it. I was thinking about which coins would be tough to buy but not from an expense perspective. I generally buy online since I'm in Germany and can't trust certain coins because of the number of counterfeits.

The top coin on my list of counterfeits is the Trade Dollar, namely because I have scar tissue having spent $85 when I was 15 on a fake.

Therefore, I intend to purchase a certified Trade Dollar and crack it out to put in my CAPS album. I'm curious if anyone has other recommendations, which coins are highly faked and better off going certified.

I know a lot of folks only buy certified so I'm not trying to start the discussion of slabbed vs raw but rather genuine vs fake. I personally love raw coins because I feel closer to it's history. But I of course own many slabbed as well.

 

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Trade dollars are commonly faked, yes. Another is Indian quarter eagles (particularly the 1911-D weak D), and any key date coins, particularly 1909-S VDB cents, and 1916-D dimes. Here is a list of other commonly faked coins to watch out for: https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/5045/counterfeit-coins/

 

I don't have any stabbed coins in my collection ;-) but most of them are certified. A couple of years ago I passed on a raw trade dollar at a coin show in Munich. It looked great, price was good, but I simply couldn't tell if the coin was genuine AND its surfaces were original and not cleaned. The only other commonly seen counterfeit I am aware of is the 1952-D 5 Mark "Germanic Museum". I've seen one at a coin show I suspected to be fake and also submitted another one, which NGC returned as a counterfeit.


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The proof or the UNC version? The proof version seems quite scarce.

 

I submitted the regular UNC version. But it appeared to have PL surfaces compared to the other 5 Mark commemoratives of that era. Well it turned out to be fake - lesson learnt...

 

Haha, too funny about my error in the title. Maybe I should work at the mint...

Thanks for the info on most commonly faked coins.

 

No stabbed coins here, but I have stabbing coin:

...and used it to get myself out of tricky situations presented to me after bad guys tie me up and leave me to die, or used it to solve complex problems in nail-biting, cliff-hanging situations by making things out of ordinary objects.
It helps if I have a roll of duct tape, too.

 

It's going to be a few months more than likely but eventually I will probably pick up that SLABBED trade dollar (Assuming I don't buy another shiny object first) and I may need some help on how to properly crack open a slab without damaging the coin.

 

I was not aware MacGyver was a collector.

 

Why not have both? I highly recommend making a digital coin album. It does take time but it's well worth it.

 

I used to use albums that held slabbed coins.
See here (I'm posting this link ONLY to show one possible album; I'm not touting this brand or vendor):
http://www.eaglecoinholders.com/new/catalog/index.php?cPath=21_28

Plus: They do the job.
Negative: They take up a LOT of extra room so storage is a problem. And they are rather clunky.

 

It's hard to explain. The numismatist in me would love to only buy choice MS examples that are certified.

However, the kid in me and the coin collector in me absolutely loves "clean" examples of coins in Fine to Extra Fine or so because they are embedded with history, show character and use. My mint state half eagle might have sat in a bank vault somewhere but that corroded 1877 Indian head I own may have travelled the entire country ten times over.

It's personally my greatest dilemma. Hence cracking out the coin. I also like to be closer to my coins and create the latest chapter in their long history. I just don't want to damage them.

 

I probably would only buy slabbed trade dollars unless I felt educated enough to comfortably authenticate it. If I buy one slabbed I won't break it out.

 

I try to use the rule that if I don't know enough about a coin to buy one raw, I simply never buy one at all. For me, the learning IS the point, not the HAVING.

 

A good rule but one I sometimes don't follow when I "just have to have one now".

 

There is a downside to cracking out commonly counterfeited coins such as trade dollars and Indian gold: you lose the third-party certification that is is genuine.

 

But you still have the problem of counterfeit coins in counterfeit slabs.

 

That, however, remains a relatively minor issue to the problem of counterfeited raw coins.

 

For me this won't work.
My primary collection is a type set, 1793 through 1964.
Based on my definition of a type set that that includes some 90+ coins.
That's some 60+ separate designs, the rest being varieties.
I don't have the time to learn them all in depth.