I bought some 1oz silver eagles a while back and a few of them turned out to be fakes. In the image the fake is on the left. The main, easiest differences to spot are the design of the shield, and the finish is a lot coarser on the fake. The genuine item on the right has a lot more finer detail, easily visible in the feathers. It was late in the afternoon (in a rush) there were about 30 x 1oz coins, I did a spot test on them but missed the few fakes. Lesson learned If someone else is saved by these images then balance is restored!
Garage sale in Brisbane. They were all in a lot. I don't think he knew, he seemed pretty genuine. Here are a couple of images of the full fake coin. The ~ between Silver and One is a dash is another easy difference to spot.
You should buy a mixed bag of different coins from a place like PerthBullion. Get yourself familiar with coins, that way you will know what to look for in the future. If you had a real eagle to compare too, you would laugh at how bad this fake is.
I currently have 92kg of mixed silver including 1050 x 1oz items from around the world. Over the past several years I've probably bought and sold another 250-300kg of mixed items and bought 28kg of coins and had them melted into kilo bars. I bought the 3 items mentioned above in a lot, due only to inattention, not lack of knowledge. I put the images up as a reference to help anyone interested, not so I could be told I'm dumb. Ed
Sorry I didn’t mean what I said to be insulting. I thought you might have been new and give what I thought was good advice to prevent this scenario from happening again. I guess let this be a lesson to people that buy mixed bags. visualy check each coin and don’t assume they will all be legit.
Hey Leo, Thanks. I think visually check each item in a lot hits the nail on the head, never be in too much of a hurry to do due diligence. Cheers Ed
Yeah i think that this happens a lot where most people who inhert coins from parents or grandparent, and have no idea real from fake but chose to sell them mixed in cause look the same, i guess its buyer beware.
This is a bummer! Are there any dealers online that really should be avoided? I am in the process of growing my silver collection and am still pretty new to the coin world. Any and all tips would be really helpful!
I have had no problems with the big online metal dealers, as far as fakes go. Just stay away from ebay.
I don't think there would any worries with known / established dealers, either online or bricks and mortar. There are scammers in every situation though. I personally am more wary of private sellers, I consider them to lack the experience to know whether what they have is real or not (says me who has bought fakes).
Was the garage seller the actual collector? I’ve been to one garage sale in local Mosman, I wasn’t even looking for silver and told the seller to pack away a display as it worth was likely 100 times what he was asking. Talking to the seller, the collection was his late fathers, he knew very little about it. Basically he was selling a bucket full of US silver coins for face value swap for Aussie coins. I doubt he needed the money, he just wanted to decluster, so I told him about few local Sydney cbd dealers,
Weight is 30.65. At the time I didn't have a glass or a scale with me. I have them in the car now along with a Sigma Metalytics tester.
Would love to sit down with someone with a Sigma tester or an XRF and test some of the coins I have. There are few I bought cheaply knowing they were fakes (chinese coins) but liking the designs and I am curious to see if they have any silver in them at all. There are a few other 'deals' I have had along the way that I wanted to verify were real. For instance I have one or two of these coins https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces5505.html which I picked up for under spot, which pass visual, weight and size inspection but I am suspicious of.
plenty of 1 oz Ton and 1 oz Perth Mint bars ???, they are super CUTE, say what...give you double you asked for
