Fake Kennedy's?
AUandAG
Posts: 25,029 ✭✭✭✭✭
Picked these up in a very small collection of coins that came to Vegas from Orlando, Florida. It appears that these are all fakes. Weights range from 11.18 to 11.36. All the same look and when I asked where they were stored to all end up looking the same I got no real answer (said sister had them for years). Nothing else in the collection was suspicious. Morgan, ASE, cents, nickels were all okay. Just for your info as now we have something else to check first! No copper on any showing on the edge.
bob:)
Registry: CC lowballs (boblindstrom), bobinvegas1989@yahoo.com
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Comments
I guess the Chinese will copy just about anything. I'll bet there is not one particle of silver in any of them.
Not even going to check for silver content....waste of time as I agree with you Bill.
I don't understand whats wrong with them? 40% halfs weigh 11.5 grams BU
Wow.
One at 11.36 is within tolerances but the 11.18's (several of them) are way too light, are they not?
bob
It would have funny if the mint marks was added to the 1966 and 67, or the were not added to the 68 and/or 69, or put on the back.
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If they are genuine, which I doubt, they have been "antiqued" which is an odd process for coins like this. They all look too much alike, and toning like that is rarely seen on coins of this vintage.
They are non magnetic and I'll do a specific gravity on them later. SG should be 9.53 for a 40% half dollar...stay tuned.
bob
They certainly look suspect,
I think they are real. They have an odd look but they are all the same look so maybe they just spent the last 50 years stored in the same conditions.
I've seen such things before . I bought a small lot of a dozen war nickles that were GEM BU on one side and pure black on the other , whatever blackened them EZ est wouldn't touch it. The seller said they were laying on a rag on a small shelf under his mothers kitchen sink for decades .
there are counterfeit common date wheats on "that site."
yes. they already have counterfeited everything.
I don't like them based solely on the appearance
JMHO
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I took the heaviest @ 11.34 and did specific gravity and it comes up light at 9.31.....Number are just too far off for it to be real in my opinion.
bob
Im guessing theyre real too. Probably cleaned and processed in some strange way and poor toning since.
If they were faking these, they wouldnt put much effort imto producing a desceptive fake. So if your not 100% that theyre fake already, then theyre probably not fake.
ring them against a known 40%
Actually according to coinflation clad halfs weigh 11.34 grams . What if they were struck in copper nickle alloy but not clad? I've seen fake morgans that were copper nickle but not any kind of sandwich composition
On the other hand if everything else was real why fake the least valuable items?
My hearing is not such that I could accurately perform a ring test (hearing aids). Had wife listen and she said they are different but not too much different.....lol Maybe her hearing is going too?
bob:)
This is a very very interesting post - the dies look so good.
@BillDugan1959
This IS a very educational post, once we determine the authenticity [or not], we will all be more numismatticaly educated.
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I looked through my counterfeit pile and found a fake daniel boone half and it weighs 11.4 grams , its some sort of uniform alloy not clad.
Okay, take a look below and then tell me what you think.
bob:)
Go with your first instinct
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Good photos. The FG on the darker coin is pissy. The Eagle's legs (drumsticks) on the darker coin seem smaller and thinner than on the bright coin.
This is interesting to me because this is a bread and butter coin that should be a no brainer when liquidating small collections.
Bill, shocked the heck out of me as well. Was happy to buy them just to have them.
bob:)
Interesting, if not fake they appear to have been scorched by fire? IDK- definitely weird.
The '6' in the date has two distinctly different styles.
Besides the overall look, the "half dollar" looked mushy right off.
bob
To me the wear showing in the lettering does not match the wear on the portrait and rims.
My Washington Type B/C Set
zoom on the arrow heads. lower right 2 are off enough to raise suspicions. others are off also.
the lower left olive leaves are off. are their reverse varieties on these?
perhaps it is cast?
does that coating come off? another way would be to, hopefully, soak that grey off and do the tissue test to see if it is as white as the real one.
Thanks for posting these coins. It's like a puzzle, trying to solve the mystery of authentic or counterfeit. I kind of thought I knew my Kennedys after searching so many halves for years looking for errors.
Maybe the weight difference has something to with the missing material on the high points of the devices. It appears material is ground off or maybe it's been flattened.
And if you take a look at the photograph of the reeded edges it appears there is some delamination or something going on withsome flaking of material or a poor cast possibly if casted. I would take a good look at that area maybe with a stereo microscope.
If I'm wrong on what I see in that picture I think maybe they could be real. If I had them in my hand to examine it would maybe be easier to base a decision.
I' m enjoying, let us know if you can pin it down.
The edge-on photo shows a raised ridge running all the way around.
Quite surprising to see suspicious 40% Kennedies.
That raised seam on the dark coins really makes me question the authenticity of these halves....Plus, the weight, which, alone, could happen... but in combination, along with the mushy detail on the numbers and letters, screams fake to me.... Maybe send them to Fred W. for an expert opinion. Cheers, RickO
Wow, that black coating is sure tough to get off. Quick did in EZest dip nothing. 30 mintute soak finally got it here. Weight on this on dropped from 11.16 to 11.14 after the dip. I'm still thinking fake all the way.
bob
Some see a raised line on the edge, but I just see a line, as you should with clad coins (silver clad in this case), I would not dip anymore - that definitely ruins them, whatever they are,
I think they could be real, but also remember the Chinese scammers who shipped back tens of millions of $$ in coins they claimed to have found in junked cars shipped to China for scrap. Those coins were all fake, and as I recall they were bent and roasted (scrappers frequently burn metal scrap to eliminate any organics/plastic. etc., and in this case it helped cover the fact that they were fake). These might well be from who ever made those fakes. BTW - that scam was why the Mint has shit down the scrap coin redemption program.
Fake, but I wouldn't have even thought to check.
a fingernail could feel a line
Line on reeding is a color change, not raised or incused.
bob
I do have a Columbian counterfeit of a Sacagawea dollar that has a painted line on the edge to simulate the clad layers, but if you coins not have that then the clad edge makes them real in my book. To the best of my knowledge, no one has successfully counterfeited our clad coinage design. Our lowly clad coins are pretty secure.
Absolute statements (or near absolute statements) don't take much to be disproven.
In fifty-two years, nobody has passed a clad counterfeit? Out of hundreds of millions of people and billions of coins?
The hairstyle known as the "Kennedy" will come into vogue next year. Hairstylists, get ready.
"To the best of my knowledge" means to the best of MY knowledge. Also, I am not talking about counterfeits of clad coins (I am sure there have been lots of those), but rather counterfeit clad coins, i.e. a counterfeits made of clad layers.
I am sure that there are lots people who know more about modern counterfeits than I do, but I probably know more than a lot of people simply because I try to collect them when I can. For example, I am aware of the Columbian Sac $ fakes which are usually well made and of an alloy similar in color to the outer layers of a real one, but they lack the different core layer. I am also aware of a sophisticated operation several years ago which produced reeded copper blanks of the same size as quarters - there is enough copper (the majority) in a clad coin that the copper blanks passed counting machines, etc.
So, to the best of MY knowledge, no one has reproduced our clad composition. The Chinese forgers presumably could do it if they had a mind to (they make bimetallic fakes), but I have not heard of any as of yet. If anyone has any information to the contrary I would be happy to hear it, as I am looking for new examples for my collection.
Write long, write wrong.
Hard to know for sure; my first thought was
that they are dark like that, similar to the
counterfeit Chinese Half Dollars that the Mint's
Reclamation program found, and stopped, two years ago.
Those coins, from the photos I saw, appeared darker
than these, but these might have been cleaned.
Not saying the coins posted are NG; I see some
evidence of both sides of the 'coin'. (good/bad)
I wouldn't put that much emphasis on the weights -
there are tolerances.
And, there are tens of thousands of counterfeit
clad dimes that have been offered in bag quantities,
here in the States, in the past year or two.
Please share the details! These are made in layers? Known dates? I want to keep a lookout for them. Why someone would go to the trouble to recreate the three layers and make dimes I will never understand, but then again I am not a counterfeiter.