The risks of buying raw coins.

I know its always been that way, however, the investigator that steered me to postal, and the postal themselves stated that they are now interested in anyone who is intentionally dealing in counterfeits. Remains to be seen.

 

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-jeffB Check this out. This acct was opened after the other was closed. Same town. Same items. I'm just being curious.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/burne-mikae/m.html?item=261918346522&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

 

Do you think this could be what you are talking about?
http://www.ebay.com/sch/burne-mikae/m.html?item=261918346522&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

 

It all comes down to cost. There are not that many postal inspectors to investigate every claim of forgery or counterfeiting. Remember you have the intentional and unintentional passing of forgeries everyday. EBay is just one part of it. If the postal inspectors really cared they'd be checking all of those packages coming from China and Hong Kong with coins and other items. As for ebay, you can inform them that the person is selling a fake. But then ebay will ask you to prove it. That is the tricky part. Remember before they had people looking at the coins and stamps and removing them. Now they have nobody to do that.

But now you have to add the slabbed coins to this thing. Many of the fakes are now slabbed and they fake the slabs.

 

Yup, certainly looks like the same guy. Wonder if this "new seller" has me blocked, or if I could buy a couple of fakes from him and turn him in?

 

I just bid on a Stone Mountain to see if I was blocked.. didn't get it, but was able to place bid.

 

You can try ?

 

@Copper56, did you at least get a refund from eBay on the fake?

 

That would have required sending the coin back. I did not. All ebay wanted to do was refund my money. Although I guess nothing has changed. It seems that the seller has just moved on to another ID, He and ebay have their money, the postal inspector has my coin, and.... well, there you have it.

 

Think about it, CU sales last year were 62 million dollars and that includes not just coins. The Chinese not only have virtually unlimited capital and people to counterfeit coins, but there is no doubt they love sticking it to Americans in certain ways. It's a bad situation, and in my opinion the only solution to is have a separate webpage for each graded coin, and keep track of it similar to the way carfax does it. I just can't see any other long term solution to the problem.

 

The grading companies, at least NGC that I"m aware of, now have photographs and I believe are developing ways to verify the slab. Some counterfeit slabs re-use the correct number for the proper coin but if you compare the high res pics NGC had with the product, itll be nearly impossible to duplicate every nick and scuff.

 

Most people don't know were to go to check the numbers or photos

 

That would be good,Most people don't know were to go to check the numbers or photos

 

The Chinese can employ thousands if not millions, to sit around all day, work the computer, and through the CADD manufacturing process, counterfeit coins and slabs. A dedicated website page for each graded coin, I think would immediately place a stop to their counterfeiting success. My general idea is...a coin gets graded by say PCGS, that coin then immediately gets its own website page with ownership details. One day the owner decides to sell the coin, the owner presents the website page along with the coin, and proof that he is the owner. So say Stephan's Coins offers a graded coin, only I know the password to the coin's webpage, I sell the coin, along with the coin website page password, and then the owner can use that website page one day if he decides to sell the coin. Of course the new owner of the coin would change the password.

So for the Chinese vermin to counterfeit this coin, they would need to hack in to each website page for each coin they want to counterfeit in a slab. At some point, even for the Chinese, it would get to the point, where this would be a waste of their time. Hacking is not easy, and in fact is extremely difficult in a case such as this, unless the owner is careless. CU could say maintain control over the server, so that say 3 hack attempts and the Chinese hacker gets blocked. But here's the basic problem for the hacker, the hacker wouldn't even know where to begin, each coin has a dedicated webpage and the hacker would at least need to first know that. And even knowing that, then they need to hack the password. CU if they control the server could arrange it so that the individual coin webpages could not be hacked automatically if the Chinese hack the CU website.

Frankly, similar to other websites that get hacked, it's usually due to carelessness on the part of the individual or business, or there is a mole inside the company who provides the info. For example. naturally a coin shop employee may have access to all the coin's webpage passwords, so due vigilance must still take place from the coin's owner with everything involved. But at least, in my opinion, the problem of random counterfeiting by the Chinese would be virtually if not completely eliminated.

I realize the Chinese would then somehow try to fake the website pages, but they couldn't trace the coin back to the original owner, and they would need to have an American presence because I don't think anyone in their right coin collecting mind is going to buy a coin from Wang's Coin Shop in China considering their history of counterfeiting. With an American presence for the counterfeiter, their counterfeiting sales could be quickly reported to law enforcement and they could be arrested and prosecuted. And there are ways that the potential buyer could double check to make sure the coin's URL is a legitimate one.

There are other safeguards and safety checks as well, all could be done in seconds by a potential buyer, and if the buyer is too lazy to do it, or lacks the computer savvy to do it, well then he shouldn't complain if he winds up buying a counterfeit coin.

That's my two cents, I'm not sure if it's two MS 70 proof cents or two PO 1 cents. LOL

 

You might be able to do that for the true rarities but there's no way this will get done for every $100 coin.
Somebody posted a common 30s Washington quarter. Does every Washington quarter get a website with a password?

 

I don't run a coin grading service, so I don't know at what point the extra service becomes too expensive to market to the general public. However, server space these days is plentiful and cheap.

Perhaps it can be done automatically for every graded coin, perhaps say $100 in value needs to be the starting point. In any event, I do believe that something like this is going to need to be done in the future to protect our hobby against these vermin counterfeiters who I loathe with a passion.

 

Basically it would be up to the owner and the potential buyer to use and take advantage of the website verification service. Once the system is in place, I do believe that it could very likely be made cost effective even for low value graded coins. The new service of course would be of tremendous value for expensive coins.

 

I have to give you credit. I appreciate a thinker. I think ngcs high res photos would make an exact coin tough to duplicate already. There are very minor defects that can be seen and not duplicated cost effectively. If they could be duplicated at all.

 

I hope you're right. Hey, whatever works is more than fine with me.

 

High res public images is all they need. They should do a "recall" and photo all coins not yet done.