Two Alterations? Or Are The Real?

A second element of this story is that both of these coins originated in a legitimate auction. The seller in this case, must have purchased the coins from that auction which is why they are now so sure they are real.

The fact of the matter is that even the best auction houses will miss some forgeries. The key is will the auctioneer accept a return if a coin is found to be a fake.

You can fool all of the poeple some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all of the peeople all of the time.

The mexican coin was already discussed here. It is the same coin.

http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/...PIC_ID=16919

manilagalleontrade You are 100 % correct it is the identical coin only now it has a higher priced brother. I wonder how it made it full circle? Who originally posted it? Perhaps that person would know how it got to the auction.

It appeared here on the Forum and was diagnosed as a forgery on July 11, 2007.

About 4 months later, it was sold in an Auction by the Philippine Numismatic and Aquarian Society on November 25, 2007 - with no warning that it was a fraud. I would really like to know where the coin was in between those two dates and who is responsible for not stopping the fraud.

And now it surfaces and sells on ebay for $305 in Feb., 2009 also with no warning. Too bad ebay policy forbits us from contacting the winning bidder. He is being ripped off big time and he may rip-off the next buyer.

That is a shame that once this coin was identified as a fraud, that it made its way back onto the market with no warning. But I guess that for some people a few dollars is more important than honesty.

I'm not into mexican reales but the 1906s is one of the most fake/altered coin. In the Philippine there was this guy known for altering 1903s to 1906s. And he does it perfectly so most probably he can alter any coin. Normally altered coins are dark toned to cover the burn marks of the coin, some are dipped into silver to cover it.

Back to the OP:


No. "Genuine" means to actually be what they purport to be. The only "genuine" 1880 Mexican dollars were the ones made in Mexico in 1880.

Coins made to the correct weight and fineness at a later date in some kind of official mint, foreign or local, are "restrikes" (the Maria Theresa thalers are an excellent example of this). Where the differences between restrike and genuine are well known, you can have "genuine restrikes" and they can be collected as such, but these should not be called "genuine coins", or confused with them.

Unofficially produced coins, or coins produced "officially" but to deliberately wrong specifications, I would class as "counterfeits".

Altered dates might have been "genuine", but once they've been altered, they can't be called "genuine" anymore.

If the wrong specifications are a deliberate choice of the mint (or someone at the mint), with intent to deceive, then no, it's a counterfeit, not an error. I realise that "intent" might be hard to judge, a hundred years or more after the fact, but a reasonable guess can often be made.

I'm thinking particularly of fake coins produced by one country for use in another (such as the fake Russian coppers produced by Sweden in the 1700's) or fake coins produced "on the sly" with official dies by opportunistic mint-workers.

I agree with SAP. To be Genuine a coin must be what it purports to be in each and every respect. That may be idealistic but it works for me.

I have been trying to list the categories of "non-genuine" coins for some time. There are several factors that go into the list and number of variables can get confusing. It also seems every time I complete a list an exception arises.

Here are a couple of those thorny issues.

The Maria Theresa restrikes were also made in Unauthorized Mints by official government entities (e.g. Birmingham, England after 1935) - Are they counterfeit? Regular Restrikes? or in a class of their own.

If an off metal planchet is smuggled into a mint struck using real dies and tehn released along with original coins - what is it?

If the same off metal planchet were used with the knowledge of the government but not the public does it make a difference?

I'd call them "restrikes", along with the "official restrikes" from other mints. These coins might have all the hallmarks of a "counterfeit", except for one key characteristic: intent to deceive. They were made in full public knowledge; they weren't secret or covert. The other "genuine restrikes" aren't particularly valuable, so they weren't made to fool collectors. And the locals in East Africa didn't care about "genuineness", so long as the design and silver content were the same (which they were), so they weren't trying to fool the locals either.

In fact, the only people "fooled" by these are newbie collectors who are amazed that you can buy coins from 1780 in such good condition, so cheaply.


I'd have to call it an error - unless you've got evidence of malicious intent (like, say, a rather large number of these occurring).


Yes - those would be a perfectly genuine variety, assuming such knowledge does in fact eventually become public. If not, there will always be a cloud over them - such as with the ancient Roman plated coins known as "fourees". They're still debating over whether or not at least some of those were deliberately and officially made that way, as a secret government cost-cutting measure.