1856 Flying Eagle. Are Counterfeits Prevalent?

related question: does anyone have an estimate of what percentage of the 1856's are slabbed?

DO NOT purchase this coin raw, even from a dealer.

All it means is that 1729 are unslabbed & unaccounted for. Not everyone gets rare coins slabbed.

I'm only being a little cynical here. But you know darned well that any slabbed 1856 with a problem is cracked out of the slab and that most of the problem ones aren't slabbed at all and are sold raw.

My point was that a lot of us old collectors don't play the slab game that started in the 80s. We old timers have a lot of very rare coins like the 1856 FE that are authentic and we don't need them in a slab. You don't see a lot of them posted, as some of us don't want the world to know we have them (for security reasons). We know they're authentic by using all of the same indicators that the TPG authenticators use. After all, those TPG folks, hopefully, got a lot of their knowledge & experience by being collectors first. They're kept in safe deposit boxes, safes, or in some cases are in inherited collections where the owners don't really know what they have, other than the collections that they inherited are probably worth a lot. Because a coin isn't in a slab does not mean it's a problem coin.

The 1856 FE was not a coin meant for circulation, they were a pattern cent, and they were given to members of congress, dignitaries, friends, etc. They were known at that time to be something special, and most, if not all, were safely put away for that reason. To blindly assume that any that haven't been slabbed are problem coins is really a false assumption to make, IMHO.

Couldn't agree with you more, mackwork.

I think that the point is more that in this day and age, given that there are more counterfeits (and convincing counterfeits) than there are genuine pieces, that investing in an authenticated specimen for this rarity is the most prudent route to take to avoid fraud; not that any un-slabbed specimen should be suspect off the bat. That would be foolishness, and exactly what TPG companies would want. :-)

I'm exceedingly critical of the practice of slabbing coins and TPG marketing schemes; however, I would not personally recommend purchasing any 1856 FEC that I have not seen myself in-hand -- with my Counterfeit Detection equipment at my disposal -- to anyone unless it was authenticated by a reputable third party.

Steve - I agree on "in this day and age" that a coin like this is best bought in a slab by most collectors. While fakes have always been around, the number of fakes has grown tremendously, and some of the fakes are extremely well done. It's ridiculous that even many of the more common coins now have fakes out there.

It's a shame that the 1856 that was sold on ebay was allowed to corrode like that.