Chinese Replica 1856 Fe Cent Pics

I think the success of the TPGs may prove to be their undoing. The unwarranted attention and premiums for slabbed coins will motivate the forgers to make believable slabs--which are much easier/cheaper than squeezing out that last 5% of accuracy on a coin forgery. Unless of course, the TPGs find a foolproof way of verifying their slabbed coins--their photo records are a great step in that direction.

I don't think collecting will die; but it will need to get much more informed. Collectors will need to specialize and learn everything about the coins they collect. Sellers on ebay, etc. who push fakes need to be blacklisted--all of them. Then, consider a future when the hobby will be awash in innumerable fakes. Those dealers who exist then must take an active role in documenting and culling out the fakes that pass through their door--if nothing but to protect their own reputations. All these fakes will need to be stamped "COPY" to remove them from the collector pool--forever. It's going to be a huge, frustrating mess.

Since yours is not pitted, what are the marks which show it to be a fake? I do not know enough about the originals so that yours might fool me.

The Few, The Proud, The Numismatists! (Well we can't all be Marines.)

And I have no problem with properly marked "fillers" being made. When (if!) I get originals of the fakes, the real ones stay in the safety deposit box and the fakes go with the rest of the inexpensive stuff in the album (with a note at the end of the album so in case something happens to me, my wife will know!). For what little I keep immediately accessible, nothing would really be lost and the thieves would get a rude awakening after they thought they actually got something.