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 Replies: 14 / Views: 656 |
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Valued Member
United States
162 Posts |
I was just watching a YouTube video on counterfeit coins yesterday (it popped up in my suggestions), and it's just mind-boggling the lengths some unscrupulous individuals will go to swindle other people of their hard-earned money. In any case, I've been doing coin roll hunting mostly. So I guess my question is, have you ever encountered counterfeit coins in circulation? If so, what was it? Thanks.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
893 Posts |
AllSeasons, I've never encountered a counterfeit coin in the wild and I imagine they are quite rare. The economics simply don't support counterfeiting small change, when the cost of manufacture, difficulty of passing, small monetary gain, and fierce penalties when caught. However, I do own quite a few contemporary counterfeits, everything from Indian Head cents through Peace dollars. Anyone with the ability of counterfeiting coins probably concentrates on high dollar ones - see the many discussions on Chinese fakes flooding the market. But weekly I read in the paper about some idjit who tried to pass homebrewed Benjamins. Nukkleheds! Inordinately fascinated by bits of metal with strange markings and figures
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Valued Member
United States
162 Posts |
@Hondo Boguss Thanks for the reply. I was just thinking that maybe some people would toss these into circulation, when they discover something they bought is fake. The right thing to do would obviously be to hold on to them or destroy them or hand them over to law enforcement, but I wonder if some people would do it out of frustration. Or perhaps an unscrupulous dealer was afraid of being caught, so he/she just dumps everything into circulation to avoid detection.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
893 Posts |
The closest I've come to encountering anything counterfeit in the wild was at a convenience store where I stopped to get gas. Pumped and went in to get coffee for the trip, and the clerks were frustulated. The persons immediately before me had bought $15 of gas, then went in and tried paying with 3 xeroxed $5 bills. Clerk called them out and they hauled off. No license plate on the vehicle, so they weren't going to call the cops. I suggested that they do so anyway, with at least a description of the perps and the vehicle. Hopefully they eventually got what they deserved.
Inordinately fascinated by bits of metal with strange markings and figures
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Pillar of the Community
United States
792 Posts |
Type Henning Nickel in the search box.
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Valued Member
United States
162 Posts |
@halfamind I would love to find a Henning nickel! Well, I guess these are so famous now that they're worth more than the legit version, LOL!
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
4696 Posts |
I've encountered a couple of counterfeit $2 coins here in Canada. The first one was quite a few years ago, before these became a significant problem here.
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Valued Member
Canada
325 Posts |
As Oriole pointed put counterfeit $2 coins (toonies) have become a real (and well discussed problem in this country.
Before that I was shown at a credit union a roll of coins turned in by someone....they had taken 50 cent coins planed off the appropriate sides painted gold .....so they could/would be passed off as loonies in the casino (counting on the lower light )
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Valued Member
United States
162 Posts |
Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried to counterfeit a Henning nickel? So a counterfeit of a counterfeit, since Henning nickels are worth quite a bit now.
Cheers!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1973 Posts |
Late 80's & early 90's I found a dime and a few quarters made out of a soft metal I presume was lead since I could bend the quarters with my fingers.
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Moderator
Australia
15081 Posts |
Quote:
Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried to counterfeit a Henning nickel? So a counterfeit of a counterfeit, since Henning nickels are worth quite a bit now. Of course. If it's valuable, it's worth counterfeiting. One could even argue in court that it isn't even technically illegal to make a "fake counterfeit", since the law only protects genuine coins (though selling a modern counterfeit as an old numismatically valuable counterfeit would qualify as fraud). On the more general subject, US coins from the cent to the quarter generally aren't valuable, so aren't worth counterfeiting. The ultimate counterfeit protection is to make something so worthless that nobody in their right mind would try to counterfeit it, and US cirulating coinage is very close to being counterfeit-proof. Most circulating counterfeit coins these days occur in countries where the highest face value coin is worth over a US dollar. British pounds, Canadian and Australian $2 coins, 1 and 2 euro coins, Japanese 500 yen, that sort of thing. The British 1 pound coin was recently modernized because something like 3% of all £1 coins in circulation in the mid-2010s were counterfeit. For me personally, in Australia, I've found in change a couple of $2 coins I'm pretty sure were fake. Since owning a counterfeit current coin is illegal in this country, I cannot confirm or deny that I actually own such a coin. If American golden dollars circulated more, they'd probably be heavily counterfeited too. But since far too many Americans already seem to believe that genuine golden dollars are counterfeits (or tokens, or foreign coins, or otherwise "not real money") no counterfeiter would risk counterfeiting golden dollars. The whole point of counterfeiting is to fool somebody by making the faked coin so normal-looking it doesn't get a second glance. And right now in the US, spending a golden dollar isn't "normal".
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Valued Member
United States
90 Posts |
I found a Henning nickel a few years back searching boxes. Actually didnt realize it at the time but after reading an article about them, went back thru the handful of silver id found and sure enough, there was one.
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Moderator
United States
122612 Posts |
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I found a Henning nickel a few years back searching boxes... Glad you went back to review it. Nice find! 
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2486 Posts |
Yes... 8 fake Half Dollars from boxes I've searched through the years (made of lead - Chinese origin), and one 1944 Henning Nickel...
CRH Nickeloholic. 1,700,000 nickels searched in seven years! Already have found THREE complete Jefferson sets!
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Valued Member
United States
320 Posts |
I've got a Presidential dollar I'm pretty sure is fake. To Sap's point, I believe they circulate a lot in Ecuador and I read an article some time ago that counterfeits are known there. (Course I don't have the link immediately) |
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Replies: 14 / Views: 656 |
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Posted 01/27/2023 3:46 pm
