Here Is A Dangerous Forgery

I just received this counterfeit 8R in today's mail.

I bid on it because it is a new die pair and because it comes from one of the Beijing Group names. They are producing some of the best counterfeits on the market today.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...m=8433860648

I know that most smart eBayers avoid Chinese auctions like the plague - but how many collectors would be able to spot this one on the secondary market when it is being resold by someone in the USA who might not even know it is a fake.

The problem is that this coin looks MUCH better in person than the scan makes it appear. Far from having the obvious "pits" that I thought I could observe on the scan - the details and fields are very well done. The "dark spots" are not pits at all but rather are dark circular spots of surface discoloration that could be easily removed. It appears this coin was sprayed with something that later darkened. Most of the spots are perfectly circular and are on the surface they are NOT part of the surface like corrosion. Once those spots are gone - you actually will need 10X glass to be suspicious and 30X to be sure you are dealing with a transfer die.

This is a copy of a real coin. The transfer die was made with a plastic poured over the coin which has extra fine grain. The plastic actually copied the die erosion lines that were on the surface of the original coin. In this case - the chops were also on the original coin - so they will be on every coin that is made from this die pair. That will make copies easier to spot. If they added a few extra cops it would be harder to spot these.

The coin is approximately the correct weight - close enough to be within overall tolerances and it rings. I have not yet done a Specific Gravity but I suspect the alloy is also close to correct.