How common are Chinese counterfit Morgan dollars?

mike2009

I've read about it and actually seen a few pics of the supposed sweat shops where they make the morgan silver dollars. Question is, how common is this and how hard is it to tell the genuine article from the counterfit?

I've read they use a metal known as Molybdenum that is hard to distinguish from real silver.

tightbudget

You won't find many of them at coin shows and coin shops being unintentionally listed as genuine. They're pretty easy to spot as well. They don't have that silver "ring" to them because they contain no silver.

CaptHenway

One Chinese counterfeiter took a 1921 Morgan, took the date off of it and made a master die from it. He then made multiple copy dies with every possible date and every possible mint mark and struck coins from them. Of course, they all have the distinctive hub characteristics of the 1921.
TD

JCMhouston

Actually they have multiple dies now and are getting pretty decent. Some of the ones I saw on my last trip in may you needed to know Morgans pretty well to tell. I haven't seen many of the really high quality fakes over here yet but it's just a matter of time.

ProofCents

They continue to get better and better hopfully PCGS start photo graphing there ccoins like NGC is doing

GrumpyEd

Didn't know they use molybdenum.
It's possible, it's cheap nowdays but once was a rare metal.

Read about the "golden sub" I-52, great treasure story. The sub I-52 still sits intact with it's doomed crew and a load of gold bars and molybdenum.

Added link:
The I-52 gold sub story on wiki

CHAMELEON

I bought a 1880-CC Morgan off of Overstock.com, and it was a fake. It looked pretty nice, but in hand there was something that just did not feel right about it. I weighed it, and it was 4 grams short of being proper weight. I probably would not have noticed it had I got it in the first year or two I started collecting.

anablep

<< <i>One Chinese counterfeiter took a 1921 Morgan, took the date off of it and made a master die from it. He then made multiple copy dies with every possible date and every possible mint mark and struck coins from them. Of course, they all have the distinctive hub characteristics of the 1921. >>



At least we know they know very little about the intricacies of the series. I guess you can say they haven't "read the book."

At least, not yet...