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Message:: [QUOTE="Davada, post: 57663, member: 3344"]With technology always improving, it seems as if counterfeit coins are becoming both more prevalent and more difficult to distinguish from the real article. It seems like this has become a cottage industry in places like China, where counterfeiting can't be prosecuted. Do you think it'll one day be possible to create a counterfeit coin which is impossible to differentiate from a genuine one? The ultimate effect of an indistinguishable counterfeit could be two-fold. First, there could be a great increase in accepted supply, which would lower the most counterfeited coin prices substantially. Or, in an attempt to preserve those coins which are known to be genuine, the wholesale voiding of coins without extensive provenance could occur. A genuine 1916-D Mercury you may have bought from a flea market could be labeled as suspected counterfeit just because its history could not be traced for any appreciable amount of time. The result of this would be many genuine coins becoming worthless, while the rest would increase substantially in value. Of course, as counterfeiting technology improves, so may counterfeit-detection technology. Hell, it may someday be possible (or even possible today) to test a coin's striking age using non-destructive methods (kind of like carbon dating). What's your opinion of this sort of possible problem? Do you think that it is unlikely enough that it will never become a problem?[/QUOTE]