I would assume that the safest way for a criminal to make money is to mint numismatic, limited-edition (or high mark-up) coins with real silver 0.999. As long as the workmanship is very good, there is probably no way to tell apart a fake from a real coin. I have never seen this been discussed in a forum. This would of course severely diminish the value of numismatic, limited edition, etc. coins.
Very Valid post.. lots of talk of high end Chinese numismatics being faked.. and being so good they are then slabbed and graded and then passed off as genuine.. the problem is that as you say it will pass purity tests etc not much online ive seen other than very specific chinese numismatic examples where the coin in quest is upwards of $2000 US 1for1
Sadly the Chinese have gotten a lot better about the fakes they make, in fact one company prides its self on it and how great they do at it. And any average joe can place an order. If us customers does not snag it. You will get it. the early types were laughable. Morgan Dollars with Canadian maple leaf reverses, American eagles dated 1908 1700s silver dollars with reeded edges. All very obvious fakes. But now they are getting better. coins and bars of the correct weight just thicker, all silver on copper. Individually encased bars and coins in plastic. Gold that weights out correctly. So watch out for 10 gram bars of good looking gold, one almost got me but thank goodness i used my XRF Gun...and got the guy arrested. A scale is your first line of defense. So is a file, or a magnet. But on the better Collector coins, Even the $20,000 XRF gun cant tell a fake if the metal content is correct. some of them are faking the slabs as well. so the once holy shrine of counterfeit protection is now just as common as the flea market Chinese dollars you see at the flea market sold by some redneck for $5 each but he tells ya they are silver. best to just buy from reputable sources.
I suppose that this being true hypothetically (that some high value high quality fakes could be made from the correct precious metal) this may drive more people to have raw numismatic coins graded or if in a slab, to verify the authenticity of the coin in the slab through the TPG....which may weed out nearly all TPGs except the top 2 or 3. .
Sorry - help a newbie out! What is "in a slab"? What is the TPG What does "which may weed out nearly all TPGs except the top 2 or 3" actually mean?? Sorry if these are dumb beginner questions, but I would love to understand what yu are talking about! LOL Thanks
In the grading industry there are three major companies: NGC, PCGS and ANACS, all the rest of the grading companies are called TPG (third party grading) A slab is a coin holder used by the grading company to protect and seal the coin after it got graded by them :
Gday. There is a word search function at the top of the page. Here's all the threads with the word fake in the heading..... http://forums.silverstackers.com/search.php?search_id=923779435
Thank Kam-L - I sometimes feel like I am learning a new language on here. All makes sense now. Question about the original post though. If I have a fake silver coin, which is so close to the original no one can tell the difference, doesn't that make a mockery of the whole 'collectable' coin thing? Why would it be less valuable, if it is made from the same silver, and looks the same? I guess this is almost a philosophical question! lol :lol:
As i am sure you can imagine, producing a high quality fake would require a die being cast, this alone would make it cost prohibitive to all but an elite few.. I buy unslabbed with deep natural patina for a reason.. Important in this thread to differentiate actual numismatics from bullion, obviously with bullion if you are copying a 999 bar with 999 silver its a really a zero sum game, Talking old world silver where 28 grams worth of silver in a mint state could be worth thousands there is a real incentive to at least 3d print or cast OR strike a die to get a small number and pass off as authentic.. i am sure it is being done in the coin world to some extent. 1for1
That is a risk you take with numismatics I guess. If they are atom for atom replicas then there is no way to tell.
A slab is a hard plastic capsule in which a coin is placed in. A TPG is ANY legit coin grading company. It's untrue what Kam-L indicated about ANACS, NGC, PCGS not being TPGs.....they are ALL TPGs. Some people make a distinction between TPGs in that they assert that some TPGs are better than others and they concurrently put them in a tier rating. Top tier TPGs are considered by most coin collectors to be ANACS, NGC, and PCGS (not necessarily in order of best to worst). The graders at these 3 top tier TPG companies are probably the best (most experienced and most qualified) graders in the business of grading. There are 2nd tier and 3rd tier TPGs as well. Personally, I would suggest to buy slabbed coins only from one of the 3 top tier TPGs if you are going to buy graded coins...from my experience, buying from other TPG's is risky as they tend to grade coins poorly (they tend to grade them higher than what the top tier graders will). The comment about weeding out should be self-explanatory now. More on TPGs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_grading and http://www.ebay.com/gds/Guide-to-Third-Party-Grading-Services-for-coins-/10000000004417463/g.html .
There is significant cost in producing high quality coins and so a company that is producing fake coins would have to invest pretty heavily in very expensive machinery in order to consistently produce high quality fakes. If high quality coins could be produced on crap machinery, then all the notable mints around the world could collectively save many billions of dollars by using crap equipment....but they don't because of this fact. All of the fakes being produced now can be discerned by any of the top tier TPG's....that's my opinion. The average person might not be able to discern most high quality fakes. Canada just this year is producing a 2014 Maple Leaf coin which has, as part of the design, features that are virtually impossible to replicate on anything but the highest quality machinery. I see this as a very good move to thwart future faking of these particular coins . .
