Need some assistance with a Vancouver

Barberian

I recently purchased a Vancouver Commemorative in AU55 raw. After reading up on the coin, I found out that counterfeits exist, and one of the features of these counterfeits is tooling under the CEN in CENTENNIAL on the reverse. There is no picture I could find of these tooling marks. Also, PCGS stated and illustrated in their Coin Grading Guide that genuine specimens have the typical die polishing lines and they illustrate these lines around the H of HUDSON and C of COMPANY.

On my coin, there are several nicks in that area and there are also small raised bumps below the C and E in CENTENNIAL, as well as a raised bump in the field next to Mt. Hood and on Mt. Hood. There is also a short, raised spike-like bump coming off of the mountain-man's left shoulder at the base of the mountain. My coin has die polish lines around the mountain-mans head and some lettering, but there are no die polish lines around the H and C mentioned above.

I noticed in a recent thread on Vancouvers that 2 people had coins with the same bumps that I have on my specimen but a third person seemed to have a specimen lacking these bumps. All three coins were graded by PCGS. IMO, they are clearly two different reverse dies. Here are the coins with these bumps below...





Here is the specimen that appears to lack these bumps...





Does anybody know if the tiny bumps shown are characteristic of genuine specimens, or could they possibly be indicative of a transfer die copy counterfeit Vancouvers. Could the mint have used 2 reverse dies in minting these halves?

How good is PCGS at detecting transfer die copy counterfeits?

Thanks in advance for any and all comments about this. Apologies to Justacommeman, PeaceBD, and Eagleguy for my borrowing your photos from another thread without permission.

Eagleguy

I thought that second coin looked familiar!

An interesting question. I doubt that two different reverse dies were used, given the ~15,000 mintage (but what do I know?). A more likely culprit would be die damage or some other such thing.

I eagerly await the opinions of the experts!

JH

BillJones

Here is a another one you can use to compare. It is a PCGS MS-64. My piece has the raised bumps under the "CE" and the marks on the shoulder of the pioneer.

I'd say that the piece without those marks is perhaps a latter die state where those marks were polished off the dies. That is just a guess on my part.

ricko

Your coin 'appears' to be authentic. Cheers, RickO

Broadstruck

shorecoll

If those are fakes...the Chinese started a lot earlier than we thought!!!

Barberian

<< <i>Here is a another one you can use to compare. It is a PCGS MS-64. My piece has the raised bumps under the "CE" and the marks on the shoulder of the pioneer.

I'd say that the piece without those marks is perhaps a latter die state where those marks were polished off the dies. That is just a guess on my part.


>>



Thanks for posting this picture. My coin shows similar die polish around the mountain man's head. When I see several specimens (three now) similar to my coin in PCGS holders, I feel a bit better about the coin. The lack of die polish lines around the reverse lettering still remains a concern, though. My coin also shows a die crack in the word, Vancouver, from the C to the O in Hudson's.

Kove

<< <i> Does anybody know if the tiny bumps shown are characteristic of genuine specimens, or could they possibly be indicative of a transfer die copy counterfeit Vancouvers. Could the mint have used 2 reverse dies in minting these halves? >>



I have a few Vancouver's, some with the tiny bumps, one without, so this got me curious.

Swiatek/Breen states that one die pair was used to strike all 50,000 coins, most of which were melted.

In James Iacovo's book, he states "Most coins seen by the author exhibit tiny 'bubbles', caused by die chips, on the reverse above the mountain on the right."

I agree with Iacovo's statement, as the "bumps" look like little bubbles of metal on my examples.

Justacommeman

No worries. Here are larger pics if it helps. MJ