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Thank you PCGS (Helping people help themselves)
Greeniejr
Posts: 1,321 ✭✭✭
Last week someone came in with a list of coins that they had inherited from their father. They did a bit of research and they noticed that a few coins had pretty substantial value, an 89-CC Morgan in PCGS MS63 and an 1895 in PR63. They even photoed them. This is where the thank you to PCGS comes in. Ran a cert verification and a picture of the coin pops up (and the other there is the link to the HA auction). What do you know, their coin is brilliant white best I could tell from the pic. The coin shown on the site was beautifully toned. I warned the brothers the coins may be fake. They brought them in and they were indeed fake coins in fake holders. While they were pretty crappy fakes, PCGS made our lives much easier having that info at our fingertips.
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Even crappy fakes move quickly if priced low enough. Someone posted a thread about having a few obvious fakes, as in coins that were never even made, at their flea market table, and there are always interested buyers. Even crappy fakes in a fake slab would almost certainly find willing buyers at some venues, whether it be Ebay BIN, or flea markets, or small coin shows.
<< <i>sounds to me like they were trying to sell the coins with a fake story >>
That thought came to mind but they did have a near complete set of Morgans (all real except the 93-S) and a st of Mercs (no 16-D) that looks about as close to a set that was built out of circulation 50+ years ago.
<< <i>
<< <i>sounds to me like they were trying to sell the coins with a fake story >>
That thought came to mind but they did have a near complete set of Morgans (all real except the 93-S) and a st of Mercs (no 16-D) that looks about as close to a set that was built out of circulation 50+ years ago. >>
Yikes! It does sound like dad was taken in by fake slab sellers, most likely on Ebay. Geez. The late dad thought he was getting bargains. Like I wrote, this kind of story is going to be more common. It is unsettling that a collector with 50 years of experience could not detect, what the op says were crappy fakes. Then again, I'd guess, the late dad did not even know that there were such a thing as fake slabs. Many collectors still don't know, and many are buying the fakes slabs sold on Ebay every month. The fake just has to be good enough to fool enough folks that they sell. Even with low quality fakes and a 20% fool rate, that may be enough steady customers, for the fake slab seller to do very well. The real scary thing, is that high quality fake slabs might have more like a 98% fool rate among Ebay coin buyers.