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Now that I chopped up that colossal heavy Redbook....COUNTERFEITS...!!!!
topstuf
Posts: 14,803 ✭✭✭✭✭
I am actually READING it.
Came across the counterfeit section and ....wow....
I can't find an Inet link to it and it's too much to retype....but.... you oughtta take a look at the fakes that are classified as ....D-4.
EVERYTHING on them is perfect.
Weight
Composition
Dimensions
Rims
Die marker characteristics
etc etc etc......
It left me wonderng HOW an authenticator proceeds on one of these things.
Quite amazing! 
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Got a page number? Or something close?
bob:)
Back of the book. Page probably varies with edition. Easy to find under counterfeits.
There are some amazing fakes out there.... some have been slabbed ....I believe the Morgan micro O was one of those that took a long time before being recognized as fake. Cheers, RickO
Omegas are still chased.
@topstuf said: ".... you oughtta take a look at the fakes that are classified as ....D-4. EVERYTHING on them is perfect. ...It left me wonderng HOW an authenticator proceeds on one of these things."
Don't take this as gospel. I've known a few of the guys who have taught counterfeit detection over the years. Let me write what I think. Put what I post in one ear and out the other as this is just what I should like to believe they might write as a response to your question.
I believe that measuring a coin's dimensions, weight, and specific gravity (metrology) was how authentication was done by most authenticators in the old days - say pre-1976. That's because a coin's composition, and size (diameter/thickness) are all related. When the counterfeiters had one parameter "outside" the tolerance of the genuine piece, most of the time, another would also be "off." Besides, back then, virtually all altered or counterfeits were extremely crude by today's standards. That said, fakes were getting better and better (as they have continued to do). So occasionally a "new" deceptive counterfeit would pass as genuine in the market until the authenticators caught it (as happens today),
By the end of the 1970's (earlier than that in the two authentication services at that time) a coin's metrology was deemed worthless to detect any deceptive fake. I've been told that by 1973, the microscopic surface of a coin and the die markers found on genuine specimens plus repeating defects on C/F's was the main staple of professional authenticators. Students in class were told that in order to authenticate a coin you must know what the genuine should look like.
Die markers are great, however, as early as 1972, authenticators realized that the transfer process used to make a counterfeit die could pick up many of the larger die markers found on state-of-the-art fakes (at the time the Omega $20,$3, and $1).
Today, the imaging of practically any important coin is possibly the best way to catch a counterfeit. Perhaps that is why the faker's are circulating or slightly corroding some of their products. Furthermore, my guess is that for the moment. a profession authenticator still relies a lot on his "gut reaction" when viewing a coin using a stereo microscope. That cannot be taught.
When I started at ANACS in 1978 we were still weighing every coin, but mainly for identification purposes in case we saw the coin again later. Most of the counterfeits that we saw were of proper weight and metallic content.
I hoped you would see this thread an reply. I was going to tag you on this thread as you are one of the early generation of expert authenticators who know all this stuff and can explain it much better than I did.