Identification Of Counterfeits For Members Who Wish To Collect Them.

odentheviking Good luck hunting for anything other than numismatic forgeries in your limited target group of 8 reales. In my 60 years of searching, I have only managed to locate fewer than 10 contemporary circulating counterfeit pillar dollars that I believe to be "genuine". (I get the pun there.) I own only 4 that I believe to be CCC varieties - all from Mexico. In the same time, I have seen at least 2,000 Portrait CCC 8Rs and perhaps 20,000 C&R CCC 8Rs. CCC Pillar dollars are in the same class as CCC Iturbide 8Rs (perhaps a dozen total exist) and are less common than Hookneck CCC 8Rs (perhaps 200 exist).


Have you found any you believe to be CCC?

CoinMom4 I would like to see your coin.

If it is marked COPY it really should not be a CCC type.

The word COPY was first mandated in 1973 by the Hobby Protection Act and that requirement does not apply to items made before that date.

I have seen quite a few older counterfeits with recently added "cancellations" and I always get upset at the needless destruction of an historical artifact and of course the drastic reduction in value this produces.

The 1827 US 25 Cent "coin" is a modern replica post 1973.

It appears to be silver electro-plated base metal of some sort. COPY was likely added post creation.

The coining dies (or molds - difficult to tell which for sure) appear to have been engraved with some sort of CAD assisted device. See in particular the numbers 1 and 8 for what look like "strokes" of a laser cutter or possibly an engraving tool that was free to follow a non-linear path instead of a rectangular grid pattern. The high points of the number 1 have non-linear line segments that are in the most recessed part of the die/mold. There are some other areas where similar type features appear.

Regarding the word COPY. The HPA requires the text to be incuse and to use a sans serif script. The reason the word COPY looks different is because it was supposed to be different. The presence of the word COPY in a form that happens to comply with HPA is essentially all the proof needed to place the origin of the piece after 1973. I have never seen an earlier marking that is similar. The word copy seems to have been stamped into the completed coin as HPA originally meant to require.

The wide flat rim on the item looks a lot like a mounting rim that was placed on replicas so that they could be built into items like cup bottoms or ashtray bottoms. It was a fad at one time.