Chinese Counterfeit Inventory

Swamperbob - I have no reason WHATSOEVER to doubt your expertise on 8Rs, I regard you as a (the) world leading authority on those. I simply stated that as yet no NORWEGIAN coin has been spotted as a modern forgery made of silver, as I doubt you have done any extensive research into Norwegian coins and I hoped the information would be of interest. After all, the seller debated here has three Norwegian designs for sale. If I thus diverted attention from the point you were trying to make then I apologize.

If modern Chinese silver forgeries of Norwegian coins exist then they are so good that they haven't been spotted yet. I pay close attention to the Norwegian market so I can state that much with authority. Let us hope there are none.

DVCollector, I may have expressed myself badly yet again. Forgeries of Norwegian coins abound. Chinese forgerers have made replicas of whole series of coins, even adding dates prevoiusly unknown. A Norwegian ½ or 1 speciedaler 1845 is a Chinese invention as no coins were made with that date originally.

My point here was that all these forgeries of Norwegian coins consist of baser metals - not silver. Swamperbob has identified a lot of 8R-forgeries made with correct metal. No such discovery has been made in my country.

If anyone are in the market for Norwegian coins and feel tempted to bid for something on ebay feel free to ask if the coin is genuine or not. I can spot a lot of fakes from pictures. Lately, ebay has more fake Norwegian coins than real ones.

Litotes I understand now.

Over time, as the counterfeit coin surfaces improved and as the designs got better, some of the Chinese started switching to silver mixtures - at least for Mexican and US fakes. That much I know to be true. I have seen only 3 US silver fakes but dozens of Mexican silver fakes that are clearly MODERN.

I would presume that the same has or WILL happen for coins of other countries as well. A coin with the correct feel, SG and ring can fool a lot of people compared to a lightweight copper nickel fake.

The surface texture of most of these silver fakes is still wrong (the dies are not properly prepared) and they are still easily spotted in person BUT the metals being used have switched to silver in SOME cases.

Regarding Norwegian coins, I would definitely defer to you regarding the existence of silver forgeries in the market. I own only one or two Norwegian forgeries.

However, I would recommend that you start checking!

The Chinese fakes struck in silver often look rather similar to the nickel and copper nickel fakes. They apparently "age" both types in the same ways so there is often very poor color and streaking. The alloys are normally of cupro-nickel and silver so the discolorations can be identical. Also, some of the same dies that are used to produce the silver copies are being used to make the non-silver forgeries. So the dies are not enough to tell them apart. I would start checking the Specific Gravities of all modern forgeries just to make sure you are not disposing of silver below market value.

A fake that is 70% silver has a MELT value that some dealers are missing. In many dealerships, fakes go into a junk box or the trash. That is the way it was when I relocated here. But some of these "junk" Chinese fakes can bring $10 each from a refiner. I have been pulling salvage metal from the fakes discovered here for well over a year now. My best find to date was a 50 Peso gold fake that assayed 56% gold. I rescued that from a junk box.

That was really only one of the points that I was trying to raise in this post.

Briefly, I want everyone to KNOW that:

1. Pictures alone are NOT trustworthy.
2. Slabs alone are NOT trustworthy.
3. Silver content alone is NOT trustworthy.

Also

4. Not all counterfeits are "totally" worthless.
5. Not all counterfeits are of any value either.

wow this topic really had so much gains...
Jfranch - that link you gave us really scares me off in buying slabbed ones, I could not identify the difference in the slab. One more thing, I did not expect that its numbers in existence have gone that much. Thanks for sharing that to us.