Has the wave of fakes, and the fear of the wave of fakes, finally crashed?

Weiss

Ten or 12 years ago, the frequency and quality of fakes meant to deceive collectors and investors seemed to be on a trajectory hurtling toward a pretty dire situation--and possibly the ruin of our hobby. I sold a few key coins that were especially susceptible to counterfeiting for fear that our hosts and the others in our industry simply couldn't stay ahead of the bad guys, and that the bottom could fall out of these items as more and better fakes entered the market.

But a few weeks ago, I found myself searching eBay for one of these pieces, and thinking "Wow. I think I want to get that piece again.". Then I realized that my confidence had been restored (or nearly so).

We still see threads here asking for action to stop eBayers selling fakes. But they seem to be much less frequent. And anecdotal reports of really good fakes seem to be fewer and farther between.

Have enforcement efforts, the efforts of the established TPGs, those of eBay and online retailers, and our own efforts to spot and report fakes, finally paid off? My perception is that things are better now. Much better, even.

What do you think?

ricko

We recently had a rash of '09S VDB fakes show up here (from ebay).... and a few other random types. I would not dare think that the danger is subsiding.... Especially when one looks at the traffic from Asian sites. Cheers, RickO

MFeld

My perception is dramatically different from yours. I see fairly frequent threads reporting counterfeits and some of those threads have additional coins added after the original post.

I report counterfeits to eBay on a weekly basis, just as I have for many years. And my guess is that for each counterfeit reported here, there are untold thousands of others, which aren’t. I receive emails every week, asking about all sorts of coins, which are copies. If anything, I believe that the problem is even more widespread today and by a wide margin.

FrankH

As more people enter the hobby, counterfeiting is bound to increase.
The stuff I collect is graded. So I don't worry about it much.
Newbies collecting in albums are the targets, IMO. They don't find out til much later if they've been "had."

Information reduces the impact of fakes, too.

moursund

@FrankH said:
As more people enter the hobby, counterfeiting is bound to increase.
The stuff I collect is graded. So I don't worry about it much.
Newbies collecting in albums are the targets, IMO. They don't find out til much later if they've been "had."

Information reduces the impact of fakes, too.

I'm thinking "much later" is likely when the heirs try to value or sell the collection. Might be many decades later...