1794 Soda 8R C/S George III PCGS Genuine?

@SB, I feel like this is one of those teachable moments, so I'm going to say that PCGS has it correct but the auction house has it wrong.

As is noted, the test cut is completely obscured by the holder, so it is seems like it must be either the location or the size that has caught your attention. Is it because test cuts in this time frame were not generally not performed on the edge of the coins?

Of course, I really have no idea, but am hoping to get luck with this complete guess.

I look forward to seeing what more knowledgeable folks think.

I'll go out on a limb...is it the counterpunch is revealing a copper core as in silver plating of a counterfeit host?
I hate to even comment after the other post I started, but I see something there.
So maybe PCGS authenticated another contemporary counterfeit?

If I recall correctly, these counterstamps that depict Georgie boy looking up at something in the sky are false. Host coin looks ok to me.

Eric Newman was not only a collector of genuine coins but owned many contemporary counterfeits. Nearly all of his counterfeit collection ended up in slabs. I do not know if this was intentional on the part of the TPGs but I suspect it was not because the labels never mention the coin is a counterfeit. By encapsulating counterfeits with no warning they violated several ethics rules of the ANA and possibly violated the laws of fraud in the US.

When the Newman collection went to market, I could only salivate as a great number of counterfeits all encapsulated went on the auction block and each and every one sold as if they were genuine for thousands of dollars more than they were actually worth.

This was absolute proof for collectors like myself that TPG authentication of older world coins was not very good at all.

The reason for this thread was to show that collectors who blindly rely on the grading services for authentication are making a serious error.

Ok well I learned something today--thanks @SB!

Those deep scratches (gouges, really) - possibly done by somebody suspicious of the coin when it was circulating, to see if these was a base metal core? Red flags in and of themselves?

Darn it I was going to buy that Sheffield - can't you guys not talk of coins currently at the auction block - LOL.

Stacks/Bowers as well as Heritage have the GNL Book. There on it ...

JPL

I can only concur with most of the comments. I can however add background.

I am doing this - exposing some of the shortcomings of the TPGs to break down the blind reliance on their opinions expressed by some collectors.

The example I chose for this thread was an absolute gift. The day I made the post I got a notice from Sixbid for postings of 8 reales. I spotted the 1794 in about a second as I reviewed all the 8Rs. It was only after I went to the actual auction page when I realized it was being sold by Stack's, Bowers and Ponterio. Don't get me wrong, I love that particular firm because they actually sell counterfeits. But because of comments made on the thread about the 1866 Ca 8R that shows some serious signs of possible forgery, I felt that some comments about my methods were as unfair as they were inaccurate.

So when this particular coin dropped in my lap so to speak I jumped on the opportunity. With this coin the king's profile is like an old buddy. This is one of the Birmingham counterfeits made using obviously one set of die punches.

When I first wrote my book one rather arrogant reviewer said I had included "many" duplicate coins as different die varieties. He was clueless. His examples were not from the same dies but were made from working dies using the same punches. In each case, the detailed original pictures could be used to measure alignments and prove that no two die numbers were in fact identical. In some cases almost identical but at least one measurement was different. His challenge actually made me realize that we might be dealing with early attempts at hubbing.

As a brief aside at least 6 of the 1794 counterfeit dies that I have assigned different numbers share the identical punch shapes. My detailed look at these actually added one new die number when I realized I had given the same numbers to a pair of half mules. They shared one die but with different mates. One of the mates was not originally included as a distinct entry. So instead of fewer coins the reviewer has actually added to the new count.

In any event, this particular counterfeit should be a piece of cake for any authenticator with minimal familiarity with the series - either English or Spanish. Yet it is also perhaps the most commonly spotted of the TPG errors. If you lump all of this family of dies together there are over 50 known copies. In my photographic files I have 6 examples of precisely this same coin being encapsulated in a holder and 4 are shown in TPG slabs with serial numbers visible. The other 2 did not show the actual slab - just the contact points.

I need to compare all of my photographic images with each slabed example to make sure I do not count the same coin twice for population statistics in the event it has been reholdered.

So I set up this thread as another warning because I have in hand experience with this variety in addition to scientific back up for my classification.

So far anyway no comments from the ardent supporter of PCGS.

I have approached each of the top 4 TPGs offering to review every 8R coin they have encapsulated in my area of expertise in the hopes of spotting and removing some of the counterfeits before they are returned to the owners. I would do so on live submissions daily but would need to charge $1 to per coin for the review because it would create a daily obligation on my part. If I got 20 a day no problem but if I got 2000 a day that would crush me.

I also have offered to go through at my leisure all of their previously encapsulated coins (same types) for just copies of the photographs that I could use later.

No takers yet.