RELISTED Scary good counterfeits 1793 wreath cent + 1806 half cent
ArizonaRareCoins
Posts: 679 ✭✭✭✭
The 1793 wreath cent shows the tell-tell tooling/raised lines on the reverse both above and below the word ONE and CENT:
Here are the listings for both the 1793 Wreath cent (s-9, die state IV) counterfeit and the 1806 half cent (c-2) small date, stems counterfeit:
https://ebay.com/sch/nordoc52/m.html?_trksid=p3692
3
Comments
Geez, die breaks, clashed die, they really went to some effort to duplicate this one.
Thanks for sharing.
Looks as if they are gone now..... Hope they were pulled... Cheers, RickO
That is kinda scary there!
My YouTube Channel
Not good!!
Wow your right that is scary Good!
HAPPY COLLECTING
scary good, but not good enough
BHNC #203
Jail for counterfeiters!
100% Positive BST transactions
Is it possible to see the obverse?
The one thing about this piece of crap is that it has the same look as the typical Chinese counterfeit with the dull red areas showing in the toning. Many if not all of them have that.
Flea markets, here they come!
This is why I am not a fan of raw coinage for my collection. I suppose that if I was really into a series I could make these determinations, but I am not really into a particular series of specialty. Nice clear image, for me anyway.
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I saw the images per link that you posted before it got nuked...yes, coins were frighteningly close to looking authentic.
Early coppers aren't a series I focus on; but, if I were ever to buy one for a type set I'd only feel comfortable purchasing in a TPG slab than raw.
Here's what the obverse of the 1793 wreath cent counterfeit looked like:
Here's what the obverse of the 1806 half cent looked like:
OMG....they're back. This CROOK is determined to sell his 1793 and 1806 counterfeits:
ebay.com/itm/1793-Flowing-Hair-Wreath-Vine-Bars-Large-Cent-S-9-Excellent-condition-/122613807677?hash=item1c8c5a3a3d:g:UaAAAOSw0hRZdO4g
ebay.com/itm/1806-U-S-Draped-Bust-Half-Cent-C-2-small-date-stems-Excellent-condition-/12261382037? hash=item1c8c5a6bd2:g:CzgAAOSwQYVZdPI
Is the ANACS holder fake too? That one has me baffled.
Holders are legit. This is very disturbing.
Criminal
So in other words, you're claiming ANACS holdered a fake coin? The 1793 looks off to me, but how do you know the 06 is fake?
Yes.
This counterfeit was previously identified by NGC as a die transfer made from a real coin:
https://ngccoin.com/news/article/5007/Counterfeit-Cents/
Great detective work!
Like I said, criminal. The seller knows VERY well what he's doing and honestly should be locked up.
t.
What is really scary is that this quality HAD to be achieved by someone with significant Numismatic expertise either directly, or as a consultant. Or own brethren participating in such an enterprise is despicable.
Our coinage is under attack. State-of-the-art fakes have been slabbed by ALL the TPGS's until they are detected. IMO, these coins will fool just about all of us who only have one coin in hand to examine so I will not condemn the TPGS. They do the best they can. Our job is to watch them and look for coins we see with identical defects. Then alert everyone as has been done here.
I keep notes on dates that have been "hit." These are all coins that are extremely dangerous. My list is not complete.
1c 1793, 1798, 1798/7,1804
1/2c 1803, 1806
Even worse, someone allowed a "silly putty" copy. MHO
Then again, the pics of ANACS certification on ebay shows "details" so there ya go.
Those are, indeed, deceptive.
These are different die pairs.
Listings have been removed by eBay. I didn't get a chance to get pictures of the counterfeits in their holders. Did anyone else get them? And, if so, can you please post them here.
I just sent doofus a threatening message. Looks like it worked
Interesting, I notice that he's in the Denver area. ANA, watch out.
Early American Copper, Bust and Seated.
@AMRC said: "What is really scary is that this quality HAD to be achieved by someone with significant Numismatic expertise either directly, or as a consultant. Or own brethren participating in such an enterprise is despicable."
I disagree. An authenticator who worked in DC at the ANA's Certification Service told the class that if he or his boss went to Lebanon in the early 1970's they could help the counterfeiters make a superior product. Of course he said it was an inside joke. He said the fakers are doing a good job improving their product by themselves and all the info about the defects on their dies is a big help.
IMHO, there is no need to get professional help from a professional numismatist. These days technology has far surpassed any need for outside help. Fortunately, "they" are still making tiny errors that reveal the fakes to specialists. Case in point, the incorrect "Y' on a large cent that was detected by EAC members after the coins were authenticated as genuine.
I believe foreign governments are either involved or turn a blind eye. It is similar to the Mexican 8 Reales and "Micro O" Morgan coins that were produced outside the country near the turn of the century. Only today, the coins are targeted to collectors at a much higher rate of return. I believe the proof of this is due to the various levels of quality seen on the fakes.
One writer has visited a counterfeit factory and published images of the dies and machinery he saw. I'll guarantee, these fakes in the OP did not come from that kind of operation. From what I've heard, the more money you wish to "invest" the better fake you get. Additionally, China is not the only source for state-of-the-art counterfeits. Many of the old Soviet Bloc countries are involved too and their product is not the under weight, granular, junk attracted to a magnet that many of us on the forums post as a "dangerous" copy.
Here's the listing and pics for the 1793 wreath cent. These are full size so you can click to zoom in.
It is interesting that the seller is from Colorado and that they got it certified by ANACS.
Just wait til the 3D printing I see out here in Silicon Valley gets just a little bit better.....
Might be time to just sell everything.
siliconvalleycoins.com
Anyone thinking they can get a bargain in Russia should think twice.....
Please now, do not feed these arses.
bob
I was late to this post! Did anyone get an image of the reverse of the 1806 half cent?
I disagree with you, only in the sense that these counterfeits are indeed dangerous, whether spark erosion, struck copies, even 3d printed in the future -- but just as the methods for producing them become more sophisticated, so too will the methods of detection. Using exemplars of given rare coins that have a lineage going back decades, and viewing them microscopically if merited, should continue to weed out the pretenders. And it would seem such attention to counterfeit detail would be best justified on the very special pieces, 1794 dollars, 1793 cents, and the like. Depend on the TPG's to do their best with coins such as these, and for that vast majority of lesser pieces, the kind I can afford to collect, all told the TPG's do a great job, and I'm pretty confident in the authenticity of those types of coins when slabbed.
Interesting and scary. I have handled a lot of large cents. That is a very good fake. The fact it fooled ANACS is bad too. To make up for it though, they undergraded it! Looks better than VF30 to me!
My Early Large Cents
This is interesting to me, as this appears to closely match a previously PCGS slabbed example from a June auction (images attached).
They just darkened the original coin and added some contact marks.
@originalisbest said: "I disagree with you, only in the sense that these counterfeits are indeed dangerous, whether spark erosion, struck copies, even 3d printed in the future -- but just as the methods for producing them become more sophisticated, so too will the methods of detection. Using exemplars of given rare coins that have a lineage going back decades, and viewing them microscopically if merited, should continue to weed out the pretenders. And it would seem such attention to counterfeit detail would be best justified on the very special pieces, 1794 dollars, 1793 cents, and the like. Depend on the TPG's to do their best with coins such as these, and for that vast majority of lesser pieces, the kind I can afford to collect, all told the TPG's do a great job, and I'm pretty confident in the authenticity of those types of coins when slabbed."
LOL, IMO, you are dreaming. News Flash: Even today the majority of folks at the TPGS's rarely examine coins with a stereo microscope...it is against the "rules."
Soon after these state-of-the-art fakes hit the market, I warned one of the top authenticators in the country that he better start using the stereomicroscope I sold him on a daily basis!
The Proof that you are dreaming is the fact that these state-of-the art fakes got slabbed. Each of the four major TPGS have slabbed a few fakes. Most of these have been worn or corroded. Their surfaces were not original.
The TPGS are a line of defense but they are not perfect. Lucky for all of us (with the help of all numismatists) the future fakes will eventually be detected in a timely manner.
I don't disagree with you -- no human is perfect, so things will slip by. But having been caught, in essence they now know what to look for. And if something does prove to have slipped by, that's what guarantees are for -- else the reputation goes out the window and would eventually mean nothing. As to buying a 1794 dollar (for example) I wouldn't want one with a "genuine" appearance if I could afford any example at all -- so hopefully I'd avoid those monsters smushed around to try and avoid detection. And even if there are so many 1794 dollars coming in (per my example) that they are afforded 10 seconds of viewing for each side, and a few modern manufacture bombs slip by -- again, I would ask the TPG to stand by their guarantee.
As for raw -- I'm not buying any 1793 cent or 1794 dollar or 1796/7 half raw, no matter how good a deal that friend in Bulgaria is offering me.
"They just darkened the original coin and added some contact marks".
I guess it depends on which came first; the auction house lists the provenance of the "darker" PCGS one as "Provenance: From the Collection of Robert Warner Wolfe, 1904-1973".
Also, I have never seen one of the struck fakes match the toning of the original source coin, as these two do- when they can do that...
This is the nut: "But having been caught, in essence they now know what to look for."
Unfortunately, Every book written on counterfeit detection in the past is obsolete. As soon as the counterfeiters learn of their mistakes, they remove them. Case in point: "wormy tool marks." One of my instructors who was the first to detect and name this characteristic told us that at one time (decade of the 70's) all he had to do was look for these marks on a coin and it was C/F. Fast, easy, and slick. After publishing these defects and teaching about them they eventually disappeared from the next generation of counterfeits. Same holds true today. The counterfeits are improving. As soon as the fakers find out what is wrong with this new batch, IMHO they will be virtually impossible to detect.
That may be true, but many of the same ones we have been chasing since fall 2015 are still hitting the TPG's and eBay; many if not most of these have been struck from dies made from damaged and repaired source coins, and many of the details do not match known genuine examples. Early copper is tricky, as there are very few "perfect" examples; if the counterfeiters change their "business model" for these, they will have a tough time finding perfect stock to make the dies, and these examples are normally well provenanced and documented to be quickly noticed when they hit the marketplace. Polishing the matching "circulation" marks out of the dies to hide them will also leave "tells", and again there are so few unmarked early coppers that these should also be noticed when encountered. The many articles posted on Coin Week are in an effort to get the word out to the hobby and attribute the known examples of these latest struck fakes, high lighting the common marks, but they do not discuss the other technical problems with these that are evident "in hand"; I suppose once the counterfeiters become numismatists, all bets may be off, but as of now they seem to be trying to hide many of the common marks with tooling, damage and artificial "weathering", but the truth can still be dug out with a keen eye.
EXCELLENT detective work burfle23. The eBay counterfeit seller, nordoc52, has since disappeared from eBay after his listing for his counterfeits were pulled......Were you able to match-up the 1806 half cent??
Thanks, I forgot to post that all the old fakes are still for sale or put away in old collections. The old books are good for folks wishing to get a start at coin authentication. Unfortunately, you will not be able to detect anything deceptive that was made in the last decade.
BTW, AFAIK it was the copper "experts" who caught these fakes. So goody, we know where the repeating marks are. Soon, new dies will be made with different marks and the game begins again. All it takes is adding one more step in the die-making process.
One of my instructors told us the TPGS has a few guys checking a coin. Once it leaves the office there are tens of thousands of eyes checking it.
@BillJones said: "The one thing about this piece of crap is that it has the same look as the typical Chinese counterfeit with the dull red areas showing in the toning. Many if not all of them have that."
Can you post another one of them? IMO, the red areas on this fake came when a chemical was applied to remove corrosion and once the area is touched it turns red. Has happened to me so many times that I don't touch a particular type of corrosion on copper and work around it.
@ArizonaRareCoins coins said: "This counterfeit was previously identified by NGC as a die transfer made from a real coin:"
https://ngccoin.com/news/article/5007/Counterfeit-Cents/
Couldn't fine a 1793 it in this link from NGC.
To "Arizona's" question, I can't find an image of the reverse of the 1806 half cent; I have 2 examples of the struck counterfeit 1806 "C-1" half cents, one slabbed, the other raw, but all of the "tells" are on the reverse.
The disclosed NGC fake 1793 large cent article was about an "S-5", and I have a posted article and attribution guide for it published on Coin Week, but this won't allow me to post the link- an image is attached (the intro artwork is the Editor's). The featured example sold on eBay for over $14K, and after I contacted the owner it was purchased back
by the TPG- something to be said to someone's point in this thread for their guarantee...
I saw the counterfeits that ended up in legitimate, first order grading holders last spring at the EAC convention last spring. They all had these fake looking dullish red spots. So have some the Chinese copper fakes that I have seen that didn't make it into grading holders. Large cent, small cent, they all have the same general look.
I have a couple of new ones that don't; that was actually my display- did you happen to notice the 1872-s half dollar? Originally in a PCGS slab, now in an ANACS, it has the obverse of the 1872-p, reverse of 1875-s, and edge (# of reeds") of 1876.