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Interesting range of counterfeits - in 1910 !
RogerB
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This letter is self explanatory. Available archive documents mention quite a few counterfeit coins being sent to the Mint for authentication, but I suspect the actual quantity was much larger. (Someone even tossed a fake dime in the church collection plate !)
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I am a bit surprised that two counterfeit gold dollars would be around in 1910, unless perhaps some ancestor had gotten stuck with them decades earlier, and some heir had taken it to the bank and gotten the bad news.
The Mexican dollar reference is quite cryptic!
A dime? Seems like a lot of work for little reward, even though a dime then was worth much more than now. Maybe they just cranked out a lot of them.
If it was made from some base metal, probably cast, it could have been worth the while.
Well yes, didn't think they were silver. No point in that.
Interesting that the "Chief" of the Secret Service of the Treasury department would refer to silver dollars as "S.S." dollars -- presumable he meant Sterling Silver dollars (which silver dollars are not made out of, of course).
Could SS refer to something else?
I was thinking SS stood for "Standard Silver" since they were called Standard Dollars??
I wonder if they had an O mm too..
There are hundreds of silver washed copper Barber dimes in Rochester. We've called them Rochester Counterfeits because we think they were made here. They are usually dated 1909.
And you are forgetting the Henning nickels - just as much work and half the work.
I've even seen counterfeit memorial cents and those REALLY don't seem worth it.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Seems just as easy to make a quarter. Maybe less suspicion with a dime.
Not if they are struck. Small, shallow relief coins can be struck with less pressure. If they are cast, makes no difference, but then they are easier to detect.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Makes sense.
Seems PA was ripe for counterfeiters.
bob
They referred to them as Standard Silver Dollars.
What is now proved was once only imagined. - William Blake
Yep. "SSD" = "Standard Silver Dollar;" The other silver coins were called "Subsidiary Silver."
No idea why a bank was accepting Mexican silver.
All of the addresses are of the people who submitted the fakes, not necessarily where they were made. Secret Service would use the data to build a distribution model and use that to help locate the counterfeit coin's source.
According to SS reports I've read, the majority of counterfeit coins were cast - often in good silver. A counterfeiter could use scrap silverware and still make a profit. Die-struck counterfeits, such as the micro-o Morgan dollars, were unusual but also of greater concern to SS and Mint than casts. The current situation is similar - die-struck fakes are usually more of a threat than cast ones.
@jmlanzaf....Counterfeit Memorial cents??? Really? I wonder why.... perhaps just people experimenting....No real value to be realized... Cheers, RickO
in 1960 a gum ball was 1-cent. There was still "penny candy."