Ebay Is Such A Wasteland Of Counterfeit Junk!

The coin is presented in a misleading manner--the subject title says "Error Specimen." In what way does that imply that the item is not genuine? In fact, that statement suggests to me that it's supposed to be taken as genuine and an error coin, which is even worse than just selling a fake as real, IMHO.

Also--and this is a personal quibble, but it's one I take seriously because I used to do the HTML for my mother's ebay ads and so studied a little bit of graphic design--that background. I'm going to start with a disclaimer here because, as a mod noted, these are serious accusations, so first off, I don't know that the seller is doing this deliberately--it could just be a poor choice in design. However, that background screams to me of "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN." It makes it very difficult--nigh on impossible--to read the actual ad without copy/pasting the text elsewhere or highlighting it (which any graphic design student will tell you provides its own issues with comprehension and memory--hence why we use black text on white as our default, instead of white text on black).

The composition of an ad is the first thing I check, after feedback, when buying other items on ebay (for me, that usually means CDs, electronics, or anime, and you'd be surprised at how well the ad foretells the product). If it looks unprofessional or like the seller didn't actually pay attention to making sure the ad was reasonably attractive--and this is not a thing you have to have a graphic design degree to do, either, because everyone should know about basic grammar and paragraph breaks--I don't buy. This ad is one of those I'd run screaming from even if I knew nothing about coins (which, I know nothing about goloid coins, so close enough). The background is just a huge red flag to me.

The following link has pictures of an authentic 1878 Goloid Metric Dollar Pattern that sold on Heritage in 2006.

http://coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleN...8&lotNo=2400

It doesn't look like a struck coin to me. It looks like a casting although I'm not sure if that list of composition materials is something that could be cast. The discovery date for Germanium is 1886 so this coin has to be made sometime after that unless it was just an impurity at the time. Probably the case with all trace amount elements.

IMO, replicas of anything are not good. They serve only to confuse. This goes for anything, coins included.

I have several of these. They are struck (not cast) ferric-nickel counterfeits and are quite common; however, the transfer seems to have been made from a casting.

"1878 Goloid Off-Metal Error Specimen Iron/Nickel Alloy Reeded Edge Rare" is seriously mistaken.

I'll post one of my copies to The Black Cabinet tonight for the sake of comparison.

Unfortunately theyre fakes for every type of coin. Usually you can weed out a lot of them by sticking with reputable dealers. Also if things dont look right stay away. For real valuable ones you can stick with slabbed even to break them out if you like them raw. Theres just not really a simple answer where you could say well theres this many fakes of these kind.

They are out there unfortunately

Looking now for the CCF owner to chime in and discuss this listing.

Some folks appear to have definite opinions on the listing ... wondering what the owner ... and valued CCF contributor ... has to say.

David