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Avoiding Counterfeit Trade Dollars
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Trade dollars are popular as both a type coin and as a series collectible to be collected by date and mintmark. But this scarce 19th-century silver dollar struck from 1873 through 1885 poses collectors a bevy of challenges, including finding pieces that are the right price, boast problem-free surfaces, and most importantly are authentic. In this article, Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez covers some of the types of counterfeit trade dollars and how to avoid them.
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Or Just Avoid Buying Trade Dollars.
Good read link on this subject.
I’m sure the new RFID chip slabs will help. It would be nice to mention them in the article.
Great article!
If anyone has a fake Trade dollar electrotype Please Post it for us!
Agree it would be great to see that!
Not skeert.
Last year I came across a trade dollar that was the best counterfeit that I had ever seen. The legacy was raw to NGC holder to PCGS holder. I pointed out the flaws,which we incredibly subtle, to PCGS. They bought the coin back from me. It was a very, very tricky fake.
I'd love to see pictures of that!
My YouTube Channel
That was a very nice and well written article, however I was hoping to see pics. It would be of greater benefit and much more educational to see pics of the better fakes with close ups of the areas that make the coin counterfeit.
Might be a good time to revive this thread, although it looks like some of the images have been nuked by photobucket since the original posting.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/899612/new-prevalent-1878-cc-trade-dollar-counterfeit-tpg-certified#latest
Thanks for the link... and the subsequent link to the forum article...I really like Trade Dollars and it is getting really risky in the market....Buying raw is not a good move now....Cheers, RickO
There have been a few that decidedly fake but high quality out there only noticed not by what they don’t have but what they do.
There are 76cc with an unknown/ fake rev die pair out there that have made it into PCGS holders recently
Unknown 76s rev of 75s that have made it into NCS/NGC holders
A few non-Sequitur hub types into PCGS & NGC holders but that has stopped in the past decade
The real problem is it makes the TPG treat the series as guilty until proven otherwise for close calls.
It would be fascinating to find out why exactly trade are so faked opposed to other series. Is it simply the Chinese had lots of examples near by? Thing is they only recently became worth any money. non-CC Circs (esp S mint) were junk box material up until well into the TPG era
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
IMO, @keoj should have at least mentioned the date of his fake.
Welcome al to my Doom and Gloom Saturday night rant. It would have been much worse if I were not full of one of the best tasting Salmon dinners and an exceptionally perfect tasting, tree-ripened peach - a real rarity these days!
As for the TD series being counterfeited. IMO, it was their turn. The counterfeiters "hit" a group of coins and tend to move on. TD, Flowing Hair dollars, now Large cents. It is unfortunate that EVERY SINGLE COIN SENT TO A TPGS WAS NOT examined using a stereomicroscope at 7X with the power raised as needed. That tends to "burn an image" into an authenticator's mind resulting in a better "gut reaction." That is the way it was done at one time at the beginning of Third Party Coin Authentication.
Sad to say, it is practically too late for that as many fakes have become extremely deceptive. For example, In the past, I could authenticate a TD in less than 2 seconds as I removed it from its flip. Then I put it under the scope for a few more seconds to see if there was anything I wished to image for my files. Now, many TD take several minutes of viewing to be 100% sure. Add any type of corrosion or cleaning and the job is harder. The amazing thing to me is that one member of CU and his group have been able to trace good fakes of all kinds (lately Large cents) back to almost a decade ago that went unnoticed all this time. Something similar to the "Micro-O" dollars.
We should all count our lucky butts that this group is working with the major TPGS and that these companies have become much more vigilant examining coins. Keeping images of coins for all to view is also a deterrent to something slipping by. In all honesty, I'm not worried too much anymore about US coins. As once a coin is slabbed, there are many eyes checking it out and it is backed by a strong guarantee of authenticity.
The problem I see now is World Numismatics. I expect some excitement similar to the "Regulated" gold fiasco to occur before too many years. Think about it. Just as german collectors/dealers grew up with German coins, most here grew up in the USA and collected US coins forever before becoming an authenticator or dealer. They are like familiar old friends to us minted from the 16th Century to modern days. How many of us (except for a few advanced specialists /dealers/collectors) can say that about coins from a foreign country - say Germany, China or Mexico? If you can read between the lines, it's too bad, all world coins were not given the attention in the USA they deserved fifty-plus years ago when authenticating coins was child's play to those of us today.
I am glad that PCGS produced this article; images would have been helpful.
I think that the theory that Trade Dollars were the most commonly couterfeited coin by the Chinese because they had them sitting around, and not say Peace Dollars or Flying Eagle Cents, makes sense. They have always been counterfeited, and most were easy to detect, but particularly deceptive ones started hitting the market around 2001 I recall.
It get really complicated when you start talking about counterfeited chop marks. I have seen chopped Trade Dollars in PCGS and other TPG holders where the chops are suspiscious but the underlying coin is good. In most of the cases, it would make absolutely no sense to apply "fake" chops to a good Trade Dollar as the person doing so would automatically lose money. Thankfully, those cases are still pretty rare.
Complete Set of Chopmarked Trade Dollars
Carson City Silver Dollars Complete 1870-1893http://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/showcase.aspx?sc=2722"
I think the interesting thing about counterfeit Trade Dollars is that the Chinese make counterfeits of their own coins of the same time period, so in the beginning, it probably wasn't considered anything different, just a novelty to go along with fake Chinese coins used in China at the time, that is until they figured out people would pay a lot of money for them. I'm guessing cheap knockoffs of old Chinese coins are available in albums in Chinatown in almost every major US city.
Fake US TD were NOT and are still NOT the most counterfeited coins. We saw many other coin fakes decades before we ever came across a fake US TD. Remember, our TD were not a popular coin series at all back then. Why fake an obsolete, unpopular, non-legal tender coin that no one wanted to buy? Back then , mint errors were considered trash! Times have changed.
I appreciate Insider2's "doom and gloom post...
I also appreciate the host's article on fake Trades; I understand these have been around for a while. The ones that keep me up at night are examples like this. Circled marks are common among the fakes struck from these dies similar to the large cents Insider2 mentioned.
@DDR was specifically talking about Chinese counterfeits when he wrote the following. I'm thinking what @Insider2 is talking about is that there were many non-Chinese fakes before the Chinese ever got involved with big time faking of US coins, e.g. Omega double eagles, Lebanese gold, 1916-D dimes, Henning nickels, etc.
If other members did not know...
This member and his group have been among those in the forefront of modern day coin authentication. Their "discoveries" of "new" counterfeits have been traced back several years UNDETECTED in various auctions!
So is the above 75-CC a known counterfeit?
Yes, the marks circled in red are common to other fake coins. It is also possible that a counterfeit reverse die could be combined with a counterfeit obverse die with a different date.
The things that would cause me to look twice at that 75cc
Too many clash marks; under eagles neck, wing and the F of OF
Luster is weird
And the banner on the rev looks shallow. I find fake often have trouble with relief. That said so did the mint form time to time so that is a really good fake if indeed fake. I would love to count the reeds on that coin. We had a list going for a while and i would like to see if the 3rd die was in range
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
That is one scary fake. I must admit, it would have fooled me...
mbogoman
https://pcgs.com/setregistry/collectors-showcase/classic-issues-colonials-through-1964/zambezi-collection-trade-dollars/7345Asesabi Lutho
How about size, weight, metallic composition?
just asking,
bob
I unfortunately do not have that info Bob; it went through a TPG.
Size, weight, and composition were the main ways to authenticate coins in the 1960's. Buy the end of the 1970's we rarely weighed, measured, or took the specific gravity of any coin because ALL the deceptive counterfeits were within tolerance to the genuine coin they imitated!
@insider2 My series, Morgan dollars, seems pretty easy via measuring, weighing and specific gravity to determine a fake. I've yet to possess one that passes that muster...they may be out there but the ones I see are easy to detect via these three methods.
bob
Are you forgetting to mention the "Micro O" counterfeits and all the die linked fakes that have started to be found? Check out VAM World. Otherwise, "they" have not "hit" the Morgan dollar series with state-of-the-modern-art fakes - Yet.
@insider2 I specialize in CC Morgans not O's. I've never seen one of the micro O fakes that were produced decades ago and slabbed. Wouldn't mind finding one though!
I never look for fakes in any other series so don't have that knowledge...glad I specialize and pretty much know what I'm collecting, what it looks, like, what it doesn't look like and such....glad I don't collect dreck!
bob
PS: I posted many fake TD's on this site years and years ago. Common crap out of China that could fool a lot of novice collectors and even some pretty good ones, chopped and not. It was interesting and I ended up feeling that there are more fake TD's than real ones, today.
There are countless instances of more counterfeit or altered coins than authentic pieces. I own several 1804 dollars but they are not deceptive. I've been trying to find one of the 1795 or 96 Flowing hair fakes for my collection at a reasonable price. When the fakes get that good, they scratch an itch to own a genuine coin.
Here's a counterfeit 1876-cc Trade Dollar. Fortunately, the counterfeit PCGS holder was easy to detect:
Looks like they picked an active cert with no on-line image of it.