Posted on 02/11/2011 7:56:44 PM PST by FromLori
Summary
Counterfeit coins by the thousands are turning up in Washington state, and authorities are warning coin collectors to be on the lookout for them.
Click on link for video
(Excerpt) Read more at komonews.com ...
Is counterfeiting another country’s currency considered to be an act of war?
The little “Made in China” on the edge of them is a dead giveaway.
Text version here http://www.komonews.com/news/local/115789384.html?
Looks like these are “rare” and old silver dollars, not Eagles.
I remember many years ago, a thief in Birmingham, Al was stealing silver and making silver dollars himself in order to pass them.
Interestingly, his sliver dollars had more silver than the U.S. Mint ones did.
Thank you
A video on telling real Morgan silver dollars from fake ones from China:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePxp2dsZ2-Y
There are many other videos. The Chinese make fakes of many of the better known world coins, and the fakes are very, very good.
Weight, luster, sound, design details are markers for fakes.
This has been going on for several year, at least. You could go to coin shows and find Morgan silver dollars with the word “REPLICA” or “COPY” stamped into them. And if you’re at all like me, you picked one up and silently wondered when those extra stampings would disappear.
SDs are not, IMO, a good choice for “junk” silver, although if you like the coins there’s no objection to owning a few or even many of them. I myself prefer beat up quarters & halves for junk coinage. Although there will undoubtedly come a day when those get counterfeited as well. Leave it to the Chinese. There’s nothing they will not copy or at least try to.
“Looks like these are “rare” and old silver dollars, not Eagles.”
Morgan silver dollars, and Standing Liberty silver dollars are rare collectable coins, and worth FAR more than face value even when pretty worn, which the ones in the video weren’t. He said one of them was (if real) worth thousands of dollars.
If you know your early 19th century coins (I do), it’s obvious that 85% of the silver coins 1795-1860 on eBay are counterfeits.
Thanks I know lots of people have been thinking of investing so I wanted to warn them to make sure they get the real deal.
Ping!
See also:
Hong-couver.
I visited stores in San Fran that sold a lot of fake Chinese imperial coins; I’d imagine they hoped tourists wouldn’t know better. On the flip side, it was nice to see so many Taiwan flags; here in NJ they are all Red China.
Their solution was to counterfeit U. S. silver dollars and run them across the border. The government looked the other way because the fakes were good quality and the Mexicans were careful to keep the silver content higher than the real thing. The little scam kept businesses on both sides of the border going.
No one knows how many were made this way but it was probably millions. The only problem was that the higher silver content caused the coins to wear faster. If you have a silver dollar that looks unusually worn, it was probably hecho en Mexico.
bump
there are an awful lot of morgan/peace BU and other high grade coins, often by the roll, on ebay.
are the putting coins with substantial wear up also?
Even banged-up worn-out old Washington quarters, 1964 and older, are worth FAR more than their face value ... thanks to the federal reserve.
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