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How often do dealers encounter sellers of counterfeit silver dollars?
291fifth
Posts: 25,170 ✭✭✭✭✭
Given the large number of fakes of silver dollars of all types I wonder how often dealers are offered these at their stores or at shows. Is offering of these a common event or do the sellers mostly try to dump them online or a flea markets, etc.?
All glory is fleeting.
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6 or 7 years ago I had a guy come in trying to sell a group of Chinese bust dollars. I just threw him out. I should have called the police. He ended being quite the scammer up and down the east coast. There were weekly stories in 'Coin World' about him after he was caught.
Other than that, I don't remember seeing any of that kind of stuff.
I've been offered numerous fake coins at shows. Everything from morgans to fake lincolns. Most of them are so bad you dont need to look twice at them.
HAPPY COLLECTING
I've sold many a roll of Morgans and Peace dollars to local shops over the years. Always amazed me how they were just thrown into the for sale case without so much as taking a look to verify if they were genuine. I'm guessing those particular dealers encounter more than a few. Sad part is they probably never know it and end up passing on to the next customer.
Tens of thousands sold via ebay, amazon and alibaba everyday, you can bet they are out there and not just at flea markets.
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
Retiring at 55, what day is today?
The fake coins seem to be flooding the market in the last couple of years... Did I say flooding? More like a tsunami....We often saw a fake coin offered in years gone by... but now there seem to be hundreds on a daily basis...Very sad, and unfortunately, inexperienced collectors will get burned. Cheers, RickO
This has been discussed on the forums for over 10 years. Unfortunately, it seems no organization is tackling this. Some groups are doing things on the side but not necessarily stopping the flood.
The Asian counterfeits have been coming into the country in significant numbers since the late 1990's when fake Trade Dollars started appearing. Just think of how much of this stuff is actually out there right now.
I'm surprised by the lack of organization around handling this in the hobby.
There seem to be numerous organizations about education and tracking down counterfeits after they are sold, but not preventing them from getting on the market in the first place.
A consistent failure of ANA to support, encourage and promote the hobby.
Aggressive enforcement by the hobby will not wipe out the scourge, but it will reduce the impact and remove money from counterfeiters and sellers of this trash. HPA allows recovery of revenue from perpetrators.
Further, detriment to the hobby comes from the small-ticket items, but rare and expensive pieces.
These do show up frequently at coin shops, auction houses, etc. I see such pieces every week, both through photos that are emailed to us and as walk-ins to our location.
Many people seem to buy these from flea markets or other such places, hoping to "hit it big."
For those suggesting something should be done, what are some ideas for realistic, practical, and effective things that could be done?
Prosecution and/or class action against ebay for one. It would send a message. Turned over almost $25 billion in 2018. They can afford to have a dedicated team of counterfeit detectors. The other channels in the US would take notice.
On a tangent to topic, I was recently in Laos at a large market in Pakse, and one of the vendors had a large bucket full of some French colonial "silver" coin about Morgan size. I pulled one out for a quick look, and immediately knew the whole bucket was fake. In freakin' Laos. Wish I had taken a picture. This stuff is everywhere.
Fake $2.50 Indians but no silver dollars.