Circulated Chopmarked 8 Reales With Identical Chopmark On Reverse, Modern Forgeries?

@spence I don't own these two pieces, just came across them online being sold on Ebay. Interestingly, the two examples listed above weren't being sold by the same vendor.

@Swamperbob This could be a possibility, although I wouldn't see people in more recent times practicing the art of chopmarking coins (I could be wrong, but have never heard of this before. Perhaps in China some people do it?). This is just an opinion, but my gut tells me that finding chopmarked coins with the exact same chopmark in the exact same location and in the same exact condition would be sort of like finding banknotes today with consecutive serial numbers in circulation after they have been separated (that's nearly impossible!). The chops look fairly new, or are not in the same "circulated" condition as the rest of the coin. It just looks "off" to me for some reason. My guess is that it could be a mark to tell those in the counterfeiting business which 8 reales to look out for (of course they may have an interest in collecting the real things, but want to stay away from the reproductions). This is just an opinion of course.

After following many chopmarked coins available on the internet for the past few months, all I can say is I feel many many many counterfeits are out there, more than we would like to believe....

Now that I think about it, did those who produced the type 2 counterfeits apply fake chops to their coins to give the allusion that they were already acceptable once they reached the mainland?

A chopmark can be added at anytime after the coin is made. So there is no reason to believe they are not still being added. Some of the chops look new to me. They have not developed a full patina to match the surrounding areas.

In the 1990's I added the letter Y to many rolls of 25 cent coins because it looked like a necktie. I wanted to see if any of the coins turned up in change that I received.

Regarding chops on recently made Numismatic Forgeries. I have literally seen hundreds if not thousands. The presence of chop marks is not evidence of a coin being genuine.

Regarding the Class 2 silver counterfeits. I know for a fact, based on conversations I had with my Uncle (the die maker) and with the pressman from Revere Copper Company that the coins they manufactured in New Bedford, Masa in the 1930's were not chopmarked. They maintained that the Chinese would only pay a premium for newly minted coins with NO chopmarks.

I did not include the identity of the man who first related the tale of counterfeiting to me in the 1960's in my book because my uncle still had living relatives who might not appreciate my comments. This man was my mother's brother Edgar Levesque who also went by the alias Eddie Bishop. My uncle learned the engraving trade in Attleboro and he was never arrested for counterfeiting. He adopted the alias during prohibition when he trucked "empty" boxes from Canada to Providence, RI. I am convinced that his group also made Morgan dollars because of what the pressman related to me. The pressman was disabled and in the 1950s he began selling coins in New Bedford. He was the person who related to me that the micro-O Morgan counterfeits were made by their group. I dedicated the book to Walter. I never identified the Company where the coins were made because I thought that the present owner of the corporate name might object. After the book was printed, I checked with the lawyer who arranged the sale of the name after Revere went bankrupt and he said since the name was changed from Revere Copper Company to another name when it was purchased initially - that disclosure would not be a problem.

I only wish that I had disclosed the identities of all parties when I wrote the book in 2013. It has caused some unnecessary questions about the issue of Class 2 Silver replicas.

jgenn Yes, Wally Wac was the first person that I showed the "Henning" 1944 nickel I found in change. I had been going to his coin shop for a couple years when I brought the nickel in for him to evaluate. He gave me my first lessons about counterfeit coins. Shortly afterward, I discovered that my Uncle Edgar Levesque (aka Eddie Bishop) and he were associates. Edgar's older brother Adolar Levesque was my mother's brother and my god father. He was a long time coin collector and was the person who warned me NOT to buy a micro-O dollar because it was a counterfeit. This all happened about 1960 before the micro-O dollars were commonly believed to be counterfeit. I also had a first cousin, a man who can only be described as a career criminal who may also have been involved. He also worked at Revere Copper Company when both my uncle and Wally were employed there.

After discussing the mechanics of counterfeiting with Wally, my Uncle Edgar and others, I studied Counterfeit Detection by reading books. One of the books owned by Wally was "Monograph of the Silver Dollar, Good and Bad" by JL Riddell. That one really intrigued me because the Mexican 8 Reales had the Aztec motif with the eagle design. My Aunt Grace Murphy was interested in birds as were other family members. I still have some of the bird books. So, at a young age I was interested in Mexican 8 Reales with the many different eagles. I also realized that if I added counterfeit eagle types that hundreds of different eagles were involved. Another influential person at that time was Virgil Hancock who wrote a column on counterfeiting that I read every week.

When I began working in Boston after my time in the Navy, I met Don and Corrado Romano of Worthy Coin Co. It was there that I learned far more formally the "art and science" of Counterfeit Detection.

So for now over 63 years, I have been interested in the counterfeit side of coinage and particularly in the methods needed to detect Counterfeits and their poor cousins the Numismatic Forgeries. Much of my interest went toward learning how to separate those two different types of Fakes.

Bob named NAMES!

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This, by the way, is an interesting thread... That chop IS curiously imprinted (very light) on those first two shown - and few of these coins "could" be considered suspicious, though not obviously so (to me, anyway).

We HAVE seen twin modern fakes with several identical chops... To play devil's advocate, though - why repeat only ONE chop in that one spot on multiple dies? Can we find any other chops repeating in similar spots and on varying dies?

Along those lines - and I'm not a chopmark student or aficionado, so I've never paid THAT much attention to - I thought I recalled seeing some comment years about certain merchants tending to apply their chops in the same spot. I could totally be misremembering that, though...

A start to seeing is there's actually anything here would be to take as a test that 1796, look at EVERY 1796 you can find on Worthpoint (the best to search b/c IF these were fake, they would primarily be disseminated on eBay)... and see if there are others.

FWIW... I just took a quick look through my files, though limited it to Charles IIII issues to preserve my sanity. I don't find any other instances of that chop occurring in or around that spot in any pics I've saved of confirmed, possible, deduced, probable, highly suspected, etc., etc. modern numismatic fakes for those years of Mexico.

That by no means confirms anything at all life... but I do have a lot of pics, and if there was even a moderate amount of repetition by some forgery ring/source, I'd probably have at least something.

If it were me, I would run through Worthpoint for (at least) all 1796s... and Google + Jack Ma's site also.