Could This Be A Fake PCGS Slab?

I don't see anything about the slab which really alarms me, and it seems a pretty odd issue/grade to counterfeit.

yeah I know it is but it wasn't the coin, rather the slab. after all it did resemble a picture example of a fake I found on about.com

thanks trout1105, i'll be sure to use it from now on. now I know how I just missed out on a $150 category coin! the bidder sure got lucky winning it for $52, that was just below what I was about to bid for it... hopefully there'll be another time

Doesn't this make you prefer to buy raw coins instead lol apart from verifying the serial number, are there any better and surefire ways to recognize immediately one of those high quality fakes that have been proven already? reading about people being fooled into wasting thousands sure isn't my cup of tea...

well it does score a respectable $160 at VF20 alone, according to ngccoin's price guide. Maybe it isn't the most up to date or perhaps that only reflects the price we can expect to pay a dealer for, I don't know. but at least for me that is a lot of money and a potential target for counterfeiters. I haven't been able to find any references online however, which point to fakes or restrikes of these coins but I thought I saw traces of them just recently.

I saw a potential fake 3 mark coin, not of particularly rare date or mintmark, at a local shop that had trays full of well-worn coins, among them a US dollar from 1798, and although I'm not sure what it should measure, I'm pretty convinced that no such rarities would show up amongst other obviously fake coins. Wouldn't know what's going on in the counterfeiting syndicates...

Did the dealer say how he discovered it was a fake? surely those counterfeiters wouldn't be searching through records on PCGS or other websites and duplicating their serial numbers as well? if they really do that then that's definitely not good

ok.... now that is something to talk about, and a whole lot at that. I'm still pretty convinced it was a fake slab I was looking at, by reason of the little details especially the color of the hologram sticker. Raw coins from now on it is for me then!

Strange, I guess the source I read was wrong about it then, or I might have misread it in the mad rush. Yeah I guess so, I suppose I was looking at the situation in terms of cost. I believe slabbed coins convince people to pay more or closer to catalogue value?

Are there any sources that list all coins that have been counterfeited before by the way? I've found a few but not very concise ones

The OP slab looks good to me. I don't see any of the diagnostics of the first, second, or third generation chinese fake slabs.

Dealers are getting taken by the fake slabs. There is someone working the dealers and small shows in the Indianapolis - Anderson-Muncie area. He has already stuck two dealers with over $4K in fake slabs each.

Probably the most common way for the counterfeiters to get valid TPG serial numbers are the Archives of the major auction houses. Go to the archives and search for the denomination, date/mint of your fake and you while have a list of every PCGS and NGC slabbed one that they have sold. now all you have to do is harvest the serial numbers off of each of them. that is how we prove a lot of the fakes. Go o the archives and search for the serial number of the questionable slab. Quite often it will pop up and you can look at the picture and see it is not the same coin.