Questionable Coins

Its a shame the market has become flooded with so many counterfeit coins. Gone are the days where you could feel comfortable buying a raw coin.

I'm going to give the seller a couple days to respond before I start kicking up a fuss. The pictures in the auction appeared to be taken from about 1-2' away from the coin, & were very similar to the pictures taken of the sellers other items(none were coins). From that distance I had no reason to suspect the coins were fake. I did think they were possibly hiding the amount of "corrosion" the seller described in the listing, but with almost 500 100% feedback I wasn't expecting counterfeits.

If this seller regularly sold coins I would probably be pretty mad, as a non-coin seller it's possible they didn't know they had fakes. I'll try to keep this thread updated to let everyone know how it comes out. I had one forum member express an interest in these, I guess they need some cast copies to offset the nice looking busties they keep posting here. If I end up stuck I'll be sending these on to that member.

Try and remember never to go by a seller's feed back. Many of them just have freinds and relatives send in great statements. They can flood the system with fantastic feedbacks just as easily as selling fake coins. Hopefully you can get your money back and also, a lessong well learned. ebay is just one more place for dishonesty to reign.

I was iffy on the quarter (because I don't see allot of them) but that half isn't even close

Just got an email from the seller, they said they would give a refund. When I started this thread there was no doubt in my mind the coins were fakes. I knew they didn't look or feel right as soon as I opened the package, the weights just confirmed it. I haven't seen much on here about fakes in these denominations, & thought I should put it out there.

The pictures the seller posted were just good enough to look real, and not quite bad enough to arouse my suspicions. I thought there might be more to the condition issue than the seller mentioned in the description, but I didn't suspect the coins were fake. I could stop buying coins with bad pictures, but I have made some good buys on auctions with bad pictures.

Chinese fakes are an "Era" we're going through right now. If it's not happening already, the day will come when these are eagerly collected, for the comedy value if nothing else. I even suspect that such coins as a 1875 Morgan are intentionally done that way in China as "product" development. The "product" being humor.

I don't do Paypal, & am waiting on payment in the mail, so it's not 100% certain I'm getting a refund. From the email response of the seller I believe that the refund will come. Then again, the seller admitted they had doubts about the coins being authentic, but listed them anyway, so who knows? I'm keeping documentation, & will move on to the next step if the refund doesn't show.

It's obvious to me I need to get some sort of photo editing software, something that will let me get a better look at bad pictures. Anybody have any suggestions?

that 1831 1/2 dollar is a very nice fake, but modern.
The contemporary fakes are much better done-- usually.
That said, I have a contemporary fake Seated quarter that is so bad that I doubt tht it passed except in a dark bar in the 1800's.
So bad that it is neat.