Find From A $1000 Bag Of Silver Dollars

the crazy thing is if its a contemperary counterfit, its likely worth more than the real thing would be

I do intend to ask him if he wants to sell it. But since it is technically illegal to possess I am uncertain of what to offer or if I even want to retain it at all. The balance of my collection of Contemporary Counterfeits are legal to own because they are demonetized and can be proven to have existed since prior to 1974.

The SG proves the coin contains $12.87 cents worth of silver.

But for me the coin is SUPER INTERESTING. The coin is one of those illusive counterfeits coins I have heard about for years but never actually encountered. In 1959 or 1960, I met an old retired forger in my home town. He told me that full weight silver counterfeit Morgans were actually manufactured by his group for circulation into the 1940's. I found similar stories in period Boston newspapers as well. After years of hunting and coming up with only fakes made from 50% or less silver, I have been wondering if that story was true (and they were all melted to recover the silver) or whether it was actually just another urban myth and that the forgeries were actually heavily debased silver.

As a kid (I was about 13 or 14 at the time) using the correct amount of silver to make a silver dollar always seemed somehow fair. I also recall an episode of a TV western where that same issue was raised. The lead character was defending a fellow who was making and passing silver dollars with more silver than the US coins contained. The defense argument was that it was not fraud since there was more silver in his coins and on TV I remember it prevailed. I wish I could remember what TV western it was but that was likely also 50 years ago.

But the simple existence of this coin seems to me to prove that the story I heard from the old forger 50 years ago was in fact true. This coin has 0.7254 troy ounces of silver (versus 0.7736). The coin is only 0.048 grams low which is 94% of the full weight. That would have been right at the lower limit for a legal dollar in 1940. At today's silver price it is only about 86 cents lower than an MS Morgan but likely matches the value of a real Morgan in AG.

This is certainly one date that neither the Chinese nor any other Modern forger would ever dream of producing with anything near the full weight of silver because a worn 1921 s Morgan with a damaged rim is only bullion.

So my final conclusion is that it has to be contemporary and based on my experience it is in fact a VERY RARE counterfeit.

the eagles head does not look even close to what it should be like....

BTW - I concur with the sand cast fake assessment.

Dcreek1968 If I understand you correctly - you would put the water and container on the scale and zero it out. Then adding the coin would give you the same weight as in air.

You need to weigh it hanging in water. The analytical scale I use (a 4 beam Ohaus balance) has a hook above the normal pan and a free arm that can support the water and container.

Here is a sketch I made of how it works using a picture of an Ohaus scale like mine. The arm in the Photo is in the balse - you just raise it to do the test.




Here is another set up I found on the internet - it will work but you would have to adjust your calculations for the effect of the wire.

You know JBuck. we should have a feature that would allow us to searc.... oh, nvm...

I wouldn't even think about checking to see if such an ultra-common date was a fake. Good catch.