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Interesting thought on counterfeiting
shorecoll
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We all watch, listen and hopefully learn on the various attempts by nefarious persons to slip counterfeits past the hobby. What if someone counterfeited an entire monster box of AGEs? How long would it take for someone to realize it had been done? Does anyone routinely check or even assay such things? I know a lot of boxes of ASEs get broken up, but not sure about gold. Hmmmm!!!
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I've heard of 1oz gold eagles being found fake. I wish I had a chance to inspect them...
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I don't doubt it's been tried. Seeing as that would be probably an $8K score or thereabout to the scammer who could pull it off even once, the incentive is certainly there.
There some disincentives. A considerable amount of work would need to go into preparing tungsten planchets, somehow gilding them, preparing high-fidelity dies, and imparting a visually correct strike & surface. It might be easier to start with a genuine box and hollow-out each one & backfill with W. That said, the potential haul on a monster box would be a heck of a lot more than $8k. They’re worth $600k+ a box these days.
Tungsten- R -Us
:'(
Interesting thought best thing to do is buy sealed by mint boxes only and from reputable dealer. If you ever get anything fake all would cover that loss without question.
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Whoops, I was thinking of the silver ones. So yeah ... anything you can score a half mil on if you don't get caught, don't you kind of have to figure somebody is trying? It's a sleazy world out there.
@Kkathyl I wonder if the mint sealed mint box also isn't targeted by the counterfeiters, seems like a very soft target to me.
The market is thin, and the players know one another. A "new" player would be highly suspect. Then, there's ricin.....
That would be quite a project.... and, as mentioned, it is a very tight market....Not a casual "Hey, have you got any monster boxes of AGE's?" type of thing. They certainly do not walk into your local coin shop either. Cheers, RickO
That would be quite a project.... and, as mentioned, it is a very tight market....Not a casual "Hey, have you got any monster boxes of AGE's?" type of thing. They certainly do not walk into your local coin shop either. Cheers, RickO
So I buy a monster box from APMEX, send it to my Chinese buddies for "re-processing", sell it back to APMEX 6 months later. It would be a random occurrence for the next buyer to actually open the "sealed" box and check them, or it could go into a depository vault for 20 years?
The presumption here is that a monster box is worth more sealed than unsealed. I don't think that there is a difference. I know that, as a buyer, I'd rather have an unsealed box that can be inspected. If it's sealed, I'm opening it and checking.
Is it possible to use a PM tester through a monster box?
Anything can be copied. The trick is to get the straps and seal past a knowledgeable person. Remember, there are folks out there who were able to detect the counterfeit slabs that should fool most of us if the coin inside is genuine and close to the grade so as not to arouse suspicion. If I had access to a fake slab operation, I'd put a slider 84-S in it and print the label as MS-61 or 62. Stick it on Ebay, and no one would be the wiser.
I'm saying the target would be people buying numbers of monster boxes, not collectors trying to put away a few AGEs, but it would be a matter of luck if it it went to one of those people.