US source coins, probable “Chinese” manufactured “clones”/ Counterfeits…
burfle23
Posts: 2,191 ✭✭✭✭✭
It was suggested from another venue I post here, so here is my 1st one!
It appears several of the struck fakes we have seen originated from lower cost damaged genuine source examples- apparently the group responsible have above average skills in repairs but little to no numismatic knowledge. Many of the resulting “varieties” can be identified through impossible die pairings and/ or die states (several of the known examples have had the die breaks “corrected” for some unknown reason).
Much of the research and images can be found in the Coin Week articles:
Note- I have not been able to post this with the shortcuts, so I am hoping to post now and add them later!
Of the “varieties” listed I have handled 1 1796 “S-85” large cent, 2 1798 “S-158” large cents, 1 1805 “C-4” half cent, and the apparent source genuine 1854 Huge O quarter.
Comments and discussion welcomed!
Comments
Much of the research and images can be found in the Coin Week articles:
https://coinweek.com/counterfeits/from-the-brink-to-the-dark-side-early-american-copper-struck-counterfeits-damaged-source-coins/
And:
https://coinweek.com/counterfeits/brink-ii-update-struck-counterfeits-damaged-source-coins-1807-early-dime-friends/
I read the article. That is very nice. Great detective work.
I currently own 1 of the 1805 "C-4" half cents (in and out of a TPG holder), 2 1798 "S-158's" (one in a holder, the other sent back to the TPG to remove it from the holder and analyze it), 2 1796 "S-85's" (one raw, one holdered), and the genuine repaired source example 1854 huge O- pictured.
So people are:
Can the sellers of the repaired coins be traced?
Yes, we have traced one of the buyers of many of these (from China), and the initial group of sellers. You have stated the steps in the process exactly as I know it! Just a note, many of the struck counterfeits were initially slabbed as well.
This is a REAL problem. Individuals get away with this stuff because, in my opinion, the time and expense of tracing back is just not worth it.
And so it goes.................................
Pete
Agreed Pete; but many are getting away with these because this latest wave is so darn deceptive...
One that we hadn't "discovered" prior to the 1st 2 articles is the 1836 Gobrecht "dollar"; this one drew attention from all facets of the hobby when it hit: https://coinweek.com/counterfeits/struck-counterfeit-coin-week-repaired-1836-gobrecht-dollar-1-page-attribution-guide/
Interesting that the Gobrecht and the 1795 “S-76b” large cent are sold by the same party in the Netherlands. Are the initial buyers for these two in China as well?
Since these are being submitted to our hosts for grading, they must know who the submitters are.
I wonder how many people are involved in this operation. Is this still going on?
Thanks for the information. I hate hearing stuff like this.
I'm guessing we are extremely close if not already at the point where a large majority of counterfeits can no longer be detected by TPG services. I believe this is the single biggest factor as to why new collectors are not entering the market and as a result coin prices continue to slide. It's a shame that the government has zero interest in addressing this issue.
@Insider2 I respect your opinion and coin grading abilities more than anyone on this board but I will continue to say it until I am blue in the face. It is impossible for anyone to ACCURATELY authenticate and grade a coin in 6 seconds. If other professional graders believe as you do we collectors are screwed because there will be hundred's of thousands of fakes slabbed by the "top" grading services.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
Wow, what a problem..
Even if you’re the most knowledgeable collector around and can spot a fake instantly this is still going to hurt you because it’s going to hurt the overall market.
Submitter info, while held confidential by the TPG's and auction houses as appropriate is known along with a newfound awareness of the depth of the problem and led in my opinion to much more caution by all in "the know", which is why after all the research I am trying to get the word out on this topic.
I have dogged several of the sellers connected in these latest ones on the internet since late 2015. Sellers come and go and change names (you can tie them together through feedbacks, etc- they tend to "sell" to each other and give themselves pats on the backs...). I have forwarded info to groups like the Counterfeit Task Force and actually provided info on the China/ Netherlands connection to Customs/ Border Protection; since, that Chinese seller recently told me they had left the "coin business" for apparels...
Good work. Hopefully the seller has really moved on, and not into counterfeit apparel....
@blitzdude said: "It is impossible for anyone to ACCURATELY authenticate and grade a coin in 6 seconds. If other professional graders believe as you do we collectors are screwed because there will be hundred's of thousands of fakes slabbed by the "top" grading services."
I have seen STUDENTS in advanced grading classes grade a coin in under FOUR SECONDS on a regular basis.
@blitzdude THIS IS NOT DIRECTED AT YOU OR a disrespectful comment to other members. I'm using your post as an opening to inform folks based on what I've seen and know. Consider it just an informed opinion and of course, I
don't care what anyone believes.
Last year in Tampa, PNG put on a authentication seminar for its members. I went to the class wishing to see fakes I had not seen before and there were quite a few. They passed around coins - some in slabs. That's because a fake or group of fakes gets past a TPGS on occasion. It happens because we are humans and the "good" counterfeits get more deceptive as the years pass. Two folks next and near me (you all would know them by name) did not even bother to pick up several coins. Other times they picked it up and looked at it with just their eyes for TWO SECONDS or less. I saw other experienced dealers pick the same coins up and study them for several minutes while conferring with the fellow next to them. Then they asked one of the instructors to explain how to determine that this POS, "across-the-room" obvious counterfeit was bad.
Let's make a comparison. Do you know how many folks play baseball? Some go on to play the game in high school. A few of them make a college team. Out of those, some make it into the minors. Some of those are good enough to make the "Show." What do you think the percent is of those who know how to play the game and those who REALLY get to play the game in the Big Leagues? Taking it further, there is a Baseball Hall of Fame. Not many former Big League players make it into the Hall of Fame. In the Hall of Fame, there are some standouts. The experienced professional authenticators who have worked in a major TPGS for several decades (not all of them and probably less than a dozen) are comparable to the Hall of Fame standouts. You, 98% of the dealers I run into at the smaller shows, and 90% of all those folks who have been collectors for fifty years DID NOT EVEN MAKE THE HIGH SCHOOL TEAM! There are lots of Big League baseball players on Collectors Universe. IMO, more than on other forums. There are also lots of Hall of Fame members here.
That said, here is the rest. As a generalization, genuine coins made during certain time periods from all over the world look similar. That's why a 1644 Thaler that looks like it was made in 2018 can be authenticated from a foot away without picking it up! This comes from decades of experience and close observation. It's the so-called 10,000 hour rule needed to become an expert in something. What do we call someone with 20,000 hours? How about 40,000 hours? What about 65,000 hours with 60,000 plus hours staring down the tubes of a microscope?
Here is the catch. That fellow I just described could tell if a coin was good or bad in less than six seconds under the scope in the 1990's. As for today, recently I learned that the poor fellow often takes several minutes to determine some perfectly good looking coins are counterfeit! We ain't in Kansas anymore. That's the authentication part of the equation.
Now for grading a coin fast. Remember, we are talking about the major players in the coin market, I don't wish to name any, let's say John Albanese - nope, he along with many here and one woman
are the guys who are already in the Hall. I'm talking about the market maker's and big wholesale dealers plus the very experienced collectors. They all can grade a coin in seconds. Most of them could easily work at a TPGS but they would need to take a pay cut. These folks and the professional graders are within one point of the grade virtually any time they touch the coin and it gets finalized after the rest of it gets totally out of the flip. GRADING COINS IS EASY the problems start for some folks (at least for me) when you need to PRICE THEM and adjust their actual condition of preservation to their commercial value. How high up the MS grading scale should I push this hairlined AU? 
Summary:
Authentication can take more than six seconds because today, they are making deceptive fakes in some series yet in the majority of cases, anyone knows the coin is genuine even in a flip!" If I hand you a 1945 Washington quarter, how long will it take you to authenticate it?
Grading, usually less time with a familiar series - like a 1945 Washington quarter? I'll bet most folks here can pick up a typical Morgan dollar and grade it in six seconds.
PS I learned at one Summer Seminar the instructor told the class to grade the coin without needing to look at the reverse! That was not me.
Finally, we tend to judge others by our own standards, There are some true wizards of numismatics out there - even some we have never heard of.
good information and update in this thread.
i'd lean more towards extremely close than already there fwiw. i'm no specialist and a bit rusty but i'd love to see a range of types/dates/mm that would "not be detectable by the top 2 tpg" let alone me that would be "a large majority." - i concede that very low grades are much more difficult but modern counterfeits don't usually come this way as the value and effort required deters the culprits.
i've seen better quality counterfeits the past 1-2 years for sure but the metals are still off where appropriate metal types and compositions are not used and even then, aside from a certain few i'm unstudied in, they are detectable, even with a little practice by a seasoned numismatist of counterfeits/die states/diagnostics/specs etc.
the problem now is the same problem the counterfeiters have always had, it is difficult to produce the quality of our coinage without enduring the cost/talent etc we did to make ours. This becomes easier where big premiums are involved but at the same time, those types are much more studied.
seeing the average collector be fooled is something i agree with completely, even seasoned dealers ive ran into but a specialist and/or tpg, much more difficult unless it is an area of coinage one is not as studied in.
keep up the good posts and info and i hope people keep posting images as they go a long way now as they have in the past.
I wonder if these people learned of the transfer die technique from Paul Franklin's creations.
Regarding discoverability, these and Paul Franklin's Massapequa Mint pieces were accepted as genuine and only discovered after slabbing.
Been going on for a while I believe; several very deceptive Colonials back in the 70's documented by Newman (on the Newman Portal). I facilitated a meeting at the Colonial Collectors Club Meeting at the Baltimore Whitman Expo last Nov and a panel agreed a very expensive and slabbed silver Hibernia (and a second example) are struck fakes- documented in a research article in Coin Week as well.
Lance, we are up to 22 "varieties" from my 1787 Mass "half cent" to the 1836 Gobrecht "dollars" in denominations so far, and every variety documented so far has had an example slabbed by one of the TPG's. This is only a reflection of how deceptive these actually are in my opinion, but we may all be victim to being rather naive to the threat prior to the fall of 2015 for this latest wave.
I have XRF results on several of mine, but need reference data to understand what significant differences are. One of my strange electro's XRF scan showed significant amounts of iridium, which I understand is typically present in Chinese copper ore...
burfle, the picture is from the coinweek article. Your coin is in middle and is the same as one on left before repair?
i did intend to state to 1793-present to u.s. coins as i've seen unaltered dies outside this range available for various types.
i have no doubt colonials etc would be rather challenging due to die and flan variances/quality issues, not to mention the marriage quantity.
keep up the good work as someone has to work on that esoteric stuff!
.
Yes Dave, and my name is Jack!
Jack, do you have approximate dates on pictures? I ask because I have seen 'damaged' coins that I have passed on because I wonder if they are counterfeit and then damaged to divert attention away from them being fake. Below is your pic with white circles and then I added some orange circles that has me scratching my head. The picture on the left has more detail and not sure if photography or lighting. The tooled areas on Seated Liberty is amazing work. I am wondering if both coins could have came from same set of dies and then both messed with to get resulting coins/fakes?
Damaged, cleaned, and circulated coins have always been difficult to authenticate. When the major services decided to start grading "detail" coins it was a boon to the hobby as it seemed that no one was counterfeiting coins with severe problems. Damage tends to draw the eye to it. I think this "new" pattern started slowly as long ago, many counterfeits were seen with just a little damage or cleaning. The coins above are extremely deceptive in the images. The only way for an average collector or even perhaps a TPGS authenticator is to have a record of die markers as has been done here. TPGS are imaging coins more than ever.
Dave, time-line for the documented examples below:
1) April 2014 damaged example sold in Heritage auction
2) Nov 11, 2015 eBay example sold
3) Dec 10, 2015 PCGS certed eBay example sold 1st time
Sold 2nd time Dec 15, 2016 ("source repaired example")
4) Nov 15, 2016 eBay example (different from #2) sold
I checked out the Heritage sale, and looks like you are probably correct
https://coins.ha.com/itm/seated-quarters/quarters-and-twenty-cents/1854-o-25c-huge-o-holed-obverse-graffiti-ngc-details-vf-ngc-census-3-22-pcgs-population-6-25-mintage-1-484/a/1204-9248.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515
I do my research very carefully...
Excellent research, Sir!
I was in the ANA seminar maybe ten years ago when they were talking about the Chinese counterfeits, and several dealers were cursing the examples. They mentioned that the real quality fakes were between $200-$400 each from the manufacturer. I wonder how many of those there really are and how many of us still haven't actually seen one (or knew it when we did).
We have currently documented 22 denominations/ "varieties" so far, from the 1787 Mass "half cent" to Liberty Seated Dollars (including a Gobrecht).
@burfle23 said: "We have currently documented...."
Folks may wish to know where? Are all on your group's web sight? I don't recall reading about the Huge "O" quarters.
Insider2, the completed research articles along with other author's works are added to a collection in the Newman Portal at https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/imagecollection/510561
The huge O quarter is shown in the 1st article on damaged source coins.
One I have not documented in a research article (one in process) is this 1805 "C-4" half cent with matching marks from the source coin article:
Dang! That coin would certainly have fooled me.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
Thanks for the great images. We've received this C/F before and I have a theory that the "dot" between the "E & R" is a mark that was put on the counterfeit die by the maker on purpose to identify the coins. Similar to signing his work.
My though is it was damage on the source example...
Disagree 100%. The C/F has a perfectly round "man-made" and applied "DOT." This "dot" is similar to every "man-made" and applied "dot" found on genuine U.S. Mint coins that I have ever seen.
See this discussion "Please post your coins with "man-made" dots."
Cool; I will look up the discussion.
There certainly was something there on the source coin to start with though...
One of the "varieties" unknown at the time of these articles is the 1836 Gobrecht "Dollar" counterfeits- I have added a seperate post on that one in this forum.