Article about fake trade dollars at coin show...

PhillyJoe

in today's Coinworld.com. High quality fakes. Be careful of any ebayer with a Hong Kong address.

Joe

kieferscoins

article.

Cameron Kiefer

shirohniichan

Hmm... so some of those great deals on eBay may not be so great after all?

shirohniichan

If any cretin starts selling chopmarked counterfeit trade dollars, there will be hell to pay!

RELLA

High quality (and not-so-high quality) Trade Dollar fakes have been a problem for many years...a dealer I knew when I was growing up had dozens of them (not for sale; he collected them). Many of them were very high quality. I also remember an older gentleman who came up to this dealer's table at a show with a complete Trade set he wanted to sell, all coins that he bought here in the US. Only two of them were genuine.

RELLA

Mark

Shiro:

Here's a paragraph from the article you might find interesting, especialy the last sentence:

The Philadelphia, Carson City and San Francisco Mints produced Trade dollars between 1873 and 1878, mainly for use in trade in the Orient. Many of the coins were subsequently chopmarked with a merchant's personal stamp to attest to the coin's fineness and acceptance in trade. Gillio said dealers attending the Hong Kong show every year see genuine Trade dollars that have had the chopmarks filled in and evidence of the alteration buffed out.

Given my presumption that you are not engaged in filling in chopmarks (given the number of posts you make to these boards, where would you get the time to fill in chopmarks? !), this indicates that your chopmarked trade dollars are becoming scarcer over time!

Mark

shirohniichan

Yep, I've seen some bad "fill-jobs" in my time, but I've yet to see one that was really convincing. I even bought one that had half the chops poorly filled before the doctor gave up. Be very careful of buying trade dollars that have small shiny areas on them-- that's a big giveaway! I wish the coin doctors wouldn't have ruined the coins with their solder because some trade dollars are worth more to me chopmarked than not.

If anyone has a chopmarked 1876 II/II for sale, let me know.

braddick

The irony here is that on or abouts the 1880's these coins could hardly be given away. Most merchants would only give 91cents in trade for them and the consumer was left with a coin no one respected.

Now, fast forward 100+ years and you have them as a coveted collectable worth counterfeiting for profit.

shirohniichan

The other irony was that trade dollars were worth less than face value, even though they had more silver content than the Morgan dollars that had legal tender status and thus traded at face value. So a Morgan dollar with 87 cents worth of silver bullion could buy more than a trade dollar containing 91 cents worth of silver bullion.

That explains why no one in his right mind collects Morgans.

nucklehead

That explains why no one in his right mind collects Morgans. >>

That's it Shiroh! You and me are gonna have it out this Sunday in Anaheim at Strat's table! I'll be there at 9:00am SHARP.And no bringing the little pooch Moxey for protection.

shirohniichan

Mooxie is in Ohio. I'll see if I can borrow Tiny.

nucklehead

Somethin tells me "Tiny" ain't so tiny.