1st Ounce Of Silver?

The amount by which the weight was off was pretty small and if your scale is an inexpensive one, there's a fair chance the scale itself could be off by
a little bit as well as the round being off by a little bit also. Overall, you're pretty safe that it's not a counterfeit. Haven't heard anything about Chinese
knockoffs of Golden State Mint rounds yet, either...

For a generic round silver, Golden State Mint is reputable. I have a one ounce round from them modeled after the St Gauden Double Eagle.

Yes LCS will have fakes depending on the place. Some will be because the dealer got fooled others will be an owner knowing exactly what theyre doing. Theres great LCS out there, but just being one doesn't make the people running it honest or more knowledgeable than anyone else just means they had the money to start a coin store.

Yea I agree with Baseballs comment- someone had the cash to run a store and that's all that's to it.

I have run into many many dishonest coin shops, and there's plenty of them online, and there's plenty of them at flea market shows, and look at ebay.

Its sad,,, but I think greed is the driving force here, as is the case in many things.. but there's something about coins, I dunno if its that the dealers feel they can play on the human weakness of greed itself, or the self paranoia some have that they walk right into the hands of these dishonest coin shops....thinking that they are their buddy and have their best interest in hand.

I think thats why having a forum like this, and especially now with the Internet and social media, using this to educate ourselves we can all avoid being burned.

Exactly, no matter how you buy there will be dishonest people which can really be said for any market. Coins seem to be a particular target since its easy to get them and find people to try and take advantage of with their popularity.

It does have a high-pitch ring, so I'm concluding silver. Also, I was doing some online research to see which site has the cheapest generics with the lowest shipping. I found that SilverTowne has fairly low priced generics and some of them even have free shipping. So, I might actually just start to get my silver from them. Has anyone had an experience in which they received fake silver or gold from them?

Silvertowne has their own smelter for making their products. Reputable sites like that have way more to lose selling fakes than they do to gain with a larger profit here and there. If you ever happened to get a fake theyd replace for sure.

I happen to have a 1/2oz round from them that has the incuse indian $2.50/5 on the obverse and Wheat cent reverse on the back. Golden state mint seems reputable and I wouldn't worry too much. I remember reading a while back, a few members had weighed a bunch of ASE's and found that the majority were slightly overweight by a few hundredths of a troy ounce. This may be result of the mint not wanting to deal with the consequences that will come with underweight coins. I think it is probably the same reason why your round is slightly overweight.