This was sort of fun. I've been looking for a nice quality Trade dollar for my type set, but not wanting to spend the money. Along comes this ebay auction... see the terrible pic? No one is bidding. The auction just says chop marked 1875s trade dollar. Pic is sooo bad that the odds of it being a fake are huge. I email the seller and ask a few simple questions, and get some answers that make me think this may be real, and may be nice. I put in a bid for the opening price of $56. No one else bids, and I win the coin. It arrived yesterday, and low and hehold, it is a solid AU coin with lots of mint luster left. The chop mark is clean on the reverse and did not bend the coin, or show through to the obverse like some. It is also a nice small chop mark. all in all, a great coin for my album, at a great price. And, it is real (I have some fakes, and know what they look like, plus the weight was spot on). Sellers need to know that they are not going to make money if they don't do a better job of listing and picturing their items! good for me though! I love the coin.
I guess you were the only high roller who saw the auction. Congratulations on making the equivalent of 10 passes in a row!
I think everyone is terrified of buying one of the fakes (of which, about 80% of all ebay trade dollar auctions are). Like I said, I was happy to get a real coin to replace the electrotype fake I had in my type set without spending the several hundred I expected to spend.
I've won a couple of Ebay auctions with low-ball bids by taking advantage of bad pictures combined with good ratings, but never anything as good as a trade dollar. One thing I do is look at the seller's other auctions. If all of the pictures are bad, I figure there is more of a chance that the seller just has a bad camera than there is of a rip-off.
Exactly. This seller does not sell coins, and their other auctions (flee market junk) all looked like they were taken from a satellite... with that ugly green rug 5 feet away!
I have gotten several good deals from clueless sellers like this. One hopes they smarten up for their own sake but not for ours.
The very first coins that I bought on Ebay turned out to be a very good deal. I know that most volume listings have been picked to death and searched many times. But everything was right on this one listing, the guy knew very little about coins not even what type they were, they were listed as 500 old dimes, I bid , I won, turned out to be all teens and twentys merc dimes, 2 out of 3 were mintmarked and there were actually 543 of them. Oddly, the one I prize the most is a 1923d which is counterfit, I nor the local dealer have ever seen one before.
I'm sorry, but how do you know it is fake. Just the weight. And why would anyone put the time into them unless they made a ga'zillion of them. Is there a site that would educate the forum on forgeries? Thanks. Drew
Because it has a "D" mintmark. Genuine 1923 dimes were only minted at Philadelphia and San Francisco, according to the Red Book.
Weird... who would bother to fake a non-existant coin? You'd think someone who was taking the effort to counterfeit a coin would bother to research whether a particular coin even exists, lol. Considering it's only a dime, I seriously doubt it would be a contemporary counterfeit.
Just about anyone who counterfeit any coin. People are always on the lookout to make a fast buck. Show a coin that's not supposed to exist to 10 collectors and I just about guarantee you that 8 of them will be willing to buy it - just in case. That's because to you a dime is nothing. But in 1923 it would put food on the table to feed your family. Even 1 cent coins have been counterfeited for use as currency - let alone to cheat a collector. Every coin there is or has been - has been counterfeited at one time or another.
I've wondered myself why anyone would waste time with it. As far as how they were made I dont know but if the D was added they did a damn good job of it. If you have a red book you'll see that 1930d dimes are also counterfit. I did a little research on this at the library and found that these dimes were made in Milwaukee,Wi and Boston Mass.
