Counterfeit Morgan Dollar Or Peace Dollar

I collect and study counterfeits so whatever fakes I find would be photographed, classified, conspicuously labeled, and then come to rest somewhere in my black cabinet.

If it's a variety I already have several examples of and is otherwise not of interest, it gets stamped with "COPY" on both sides and it becomes play money for the kids. :-)

I also always keep a fake Morgan (a 1903-CC ;-) ) in my back pocket as a conversation piece.

Edit: I also couldn't vote in the poll. It seems broken.

Half of all dealers are below average , so I dunno if that's always true.

I was offered seven fake Trade dollars the other day, four dangerously deceptive. When I told the woman they were fake, she didn't act very surprised, so I suspect she had already been told.

Not all fakes are magnetic. In fact, I just picked up 7 new specimens for my black cabinet today, and 4 of them were not. However, many of them are. There is an entire battery of tests you can easily perform that will weed out 99% of all of fakes. The remaining 1% you'd need specialized equipment, or a lot of patience, to detect.

I'll actually be posting a fake-detection tutorial on the Numismetrica blog in the upcoming weeks due to a new series I'm covering on counterfeits. --> http://numismetrica.wordpress.com/

It really depends on how much the dealer in question is willing to part with them for. I tend to pay $1-3 a piece for counterfeit silver dollars nowadays. For exceedingly good specimens (from the aforementioned 1%) I may pay a premium, and for counterfeits made of silver (they exist, but are rare) I pay spot based on a reasonable estimate of purity.

Sometimes I'll have an agreement with a dealer where they let me keep any fakes I find in their holdings or recent acquisitions (of course, provided I can prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt they're fake :-) ) or I'll go over a lot a dealer wishes to buy from a third party and haggle with the seller for the counterfeits I find.

It's a very mixed bag. :-)