Could the US mint or federal reserve counterfeit silver?

C

Cheese Kun

New Member
Hello everyone, this is my first time here and I'm a new and pretty young stacker, I've recently started my collection with a few silver eagles minted this year which I bought from a bullion website and which I hope to expand. I have done quite a bit of research into precious metal stacking and one of the areas I researched were counterfeit bullion coins circulating, how to detect them and so forth. I tested the coins I have in my possession by analysing the detail of the coins and testing them with a neodymium magnet and I'm confident they're genuine.

However, while most of the counterfeit coins are thought to originate from china something which I have been worried about is if the US mint were to deliberately counterfeit their own coins so they were not actually silver or at least not 0.999 fine. This thought occurred to me when I had discovered that there were also fake gold bullion coins circulating which had a tungsten interior http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG6qbgxzgzc. This concerned me as gold was something I was considering investing in as well when I am older and hopefully have more disposable income. After doing some more reading one of the suspects for these counterfeit bars was actually the us government/ federal reserve, you could probably get a summary from watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4scUyqdWlQ. Now I'm not one for conspiracy theories but I find this believable, the US needed money so they counterfeited gold in order to make money and also manipulate the gold price, in the event that these bars are discovered far in the future it reduces the spot price of gold as investors will want to sell as they will be uncertain if the gold they own is genuine which the government can then buy at a reduced price.

I want the opinions of some long term silver stackers whether they think the US could and would do a similar thing with silver bullion coins/bars.
 
You can rest easy. The US Mint produces the Silver Eagles by the millions, and they are widely distributed and collected both here in the USA, and around the world.

If the US Government were to attempt any kind of impropriety regarding the purity of the Eagle, it would be spotted instantly, and the public scandal would be so severe, that only a madman would even contemplate such debasement.

There are just too many people involved in the production of the coins (in several different locations), and there are hundreds of professional bullion distributors who have too much at stake, to run the risk of even a hint of conspiracy.

So long as you buy your Eagles from reputable distributors, you have nothing to worry about... However, buying blindly from Chinese sellers on eBay, is certainly a recipe for trouble, especially when the price seems too good to be true.

NOBODY is going to sell you silver for less than spot, unless you get a very motivated seller, who needs cash fast - in which case, you should only deal with someone who has a long-established account with impeccable feedback scores.
 
They wouldn't bother.

Much easier to just magik $1 billion of new 30 year Treasury bills into existence.
 
YES of course they could. The government is a great deceiver.

I doubt that they are though.

Would they? Improbable but possibility is always there even if it appears to be extremely remote.

My opinion is the only way it would happen is at the very end just before they lose control in an imaginary scenario.

JM2C
 
Big A.D. said:
They wouldn't bother.

Much easier to just magik $1 billion of new 30 year Treasury bills into existence.
Click to expand...

45 billion a month now... i believe was 85 billion at one stage..
i wonder what will happen if they ever stop..
 
Alright - I'm not going to debate or defend the Government's creation of unlimited fiat currency. But in this case, we are talking about physical silver bullion, which can not be simply created from thin air.

Is there actually any intelligent person on this board, who really believes that with the millions and millions of Eagles being produced and widely distributed every month, that someone, somewhere, would not quickly discover that the Eagles were fake ??

The idea that the US Government would risk such a scandal, is absurd - and anyone who imagines that such a ploy could be pulled-off, is just silly, and probably taking the YouTube videos much too seriously.
 
If they were to use an element or create an alloy which had a near exact density to silver which they used as filling and then coated the exterior with a thin layer of silver they could possibly get away with it for a long time. The coins could be manufactured with the same dimensions and weight as genuine silver eagles and the exterior would hold up to acid tests etc. The only real way to test whether the coin was genuine would be to crack it open or do an ultrasound on it to probe the interior and how many people would be willing to snap their perfectly fine looking silver coins in half.

In the event that someone does do a thorough test of a coin and discover its fake they could deny that it was them and that it was a foreign counterfeiter. In order to reduce the chance of being caught and still make money when silver is expensive or scarce and still meet demand for the coins they wouldn't even need to make 100% of the coins fake, only a fraction of them.
 
Cheese Kun said:
how many people would be willing to snap their perfectly fine looking silver coins in half
Click to expand...

Want me to make a video for you? :)

Eagles (and pretty much every other bullion coin) get melted daily in refineries all over the place. It would be discovered VERY quickly.
 
You're too paranoid, this won't be happening. If a single fake eagle was found to originate directly from the mint, there will be huge scandals. It's too easy to verify, and with eagles being one of the most distributed coin, why would the US government run such huge risk? They'd have to make so many fake eagles for it to be worthwhile, and the more fakes there are, eventually people will find out. Also they'd have to run assays to make sure the silver is indeed 99.9%, and the results are always documented. Sure they could fake these documents, but if a single employee at the mint rats them out, then the jig is up.

The government is much more profitable printing infinite amount paper fiat than they would be if they tried to counterfit $20 bullion coins. Why commit real fraud when they're perfectly content with legalized fraud?
 
goldpelican said:
Cheese Kun said:
how many people would be willing to snap their perfectly fine looking silver coins in half
Click to expand...

Want me to make a video for you? :)

Eagles (and pretty much every other bullion coin) get melted daily in refineries all over the place. It would be discovered VERY quickly.
Click to expand...
yep that would be nice... a bend em', cut em',look how they split when you hit em' with a chisel & wreck em' vid would be cool . :cool:
 
Better off using american mints and facilities to mint fake imitations of foreign coins. I'd go gold and silver pandas. Counterfeit tons for sneaky release when/if china makes any move towards a backed currency and totally undermine peoples faith in real money to perpetuate their system.
 
The US Mint doesn't need to fake the silver content. They've already come up with a more devious scheme to con the public - it's called "Proof" coins.

By simply tweaking the striking method, they can sell the same amount of silver for a much higher premium to people who think they are getting something "finer" or more rare. Of course it's all hogwash, but there are plenty of people out there who fall for the scam.

Currently, the Eagle is only produced in the one-ounce version. But it would not surprise me to see future editions produced in larger versions, as there is a significant number of people who will gladly pay a higher premium for such novelty - as with the "America the Beautiful" coin series.

My father told me that, to get rich, "you don't need to reinvent the wheel - you just need to figure out how to sell wheels for a profit". The US Mint will continue to come up with new ways to sell the same wheels to the same people, by simply changing the way they are percieved.
 
Why would they need to counterfeit silver lol? They are much smarter than that: they manipulate the price instead. That comes down to the very same: you get less silver than you should have got.
 
We knew what Roman empire did to their coin.

Long a go , everyone was thought the earth was square.
Until one day, a crazy man point out that the earth is not square.....
 
HAC888 said:
We knew what Roman empire did to their coin.

Long a go , everyone was thought the earth was square.
Until one day, a crazy man point out that the earth is not square.....
Click to expand...
One may wonder whether or not the spreaders of thoughts believed the claims themselves, or even weren't interested in whether they were true or not, just because they suited the power doctrine of that time (ex. christian church).
 
Ouija said:
By simply tweaking the striking method, they can sell the same amount of silver for a much higher premium to people who think they are getting something "finer" or more rare. Of course it's all hogwash, but there are plenty of people out there who fall for the scam.
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with this subject, but what you name 'simply', involves much higher pressures and quality dies (to withstand them), and striking a second time. Tweaking is finetuning, a double pressure etc can't be called like that anymore. The resulting proof coins just look alot better.
 
Pirocco said:
Ouija said:
By simply tweaking the striking method, they can sell the same amount of silver for a much higher premium to people who think they are getting something "finer" or more rare. Of course it's all hogwash, but there are plenty of people out there who fall for the scam.
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with this subject, but what you name 'simply', involves much higher pressures and quality dies (to withstand them), and striking a second time. Tweaking is finetuning, a double pressure etc can't be called like that anymore. The resulting proof coins just look alot better.
Click to expand...

Yup, I think that's the whole idea - Get people to pay more for the same product by making it "look better" :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
Ouija said:
Pirocco said:
Ouija said:
By simply tweaking the striking method, they can sell the same amount of silver for a much higher premium to people who think they are getting something "finer" or more rare. Of course it's all hogwash, but there are plenty of people out there who fall for the scam.
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with this subject, but what you name 'simply', involves much higher pressures and quality dies (to withstand them), and striking a second time. Tweaking is finetuning, a double pressure etc can't be called like that anymore. The resulting proof coins just look alot better.
Click to expand...

Yup, I think that's the whole idea - Get people to pay more for the same product by making it "look better" :lol: :lol: :lol:
Click to expand...
It's not the same product. If you fail to see why, just ask a 5y old kid to do your haircut.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top