Looks Like Another Fake, Early Copper Is On Ebay ...

Sheesh. Liberty got a bit of a hair trim. Maybe transfer the pics to this thread before the listing goes bye-bye?

Beside looking fake, can you tell me some attributes about this coin that makes it look fake? My coin I know is not fake simply because people that fake coins want to fake higher cost coins not low grade coins.

Hi buddy16cat ... Try doing a search on ebay for "1807 large cent." Study the pics of the many that are now offered. Then, take another look at this subject copy. Look at its' highly raised rims, the evenly rounded numerals in the date and the spacing of letters forming "United States of America." Also, how often does one seen a genuine coin in apparent medium grade that has such smooth fields, absent of circulation marks?

Generally speaking, the more one studies the appearance of coins, the easier it is to spot something that's wrong or unusual. A serious collector of early coppers who is familiar with early die varieties will tell you far more specifically what's wrong with this piece than I. Condor's really good at this!

look fake to me

Item has been removed

When dealing with early coinage it can be misleading to try and make a direct comparison as was done here. I have seen a lot of perfectly genuine coins declared to be fake because they didn't match a genuine piece they were compared to. The dies for these early coins were for the most part all made by hand and the positions of the letters and digits excetera can vary considerably between varieties. For example the genuine 1807 posted here has a large fraction style reverse. Someone might say it is a fake because it has a small fraction, but 1807 comes with both large and small fraction reverses. However no small fraction reverse has the fraction crowded that high up between the ribbons.

The first things I see about this piece is the rim. It has a high rim with denticals inside it, a feature that didn't start in US coins until 1834. The date is too small and much further away from the curl than on any 1807 large cent. None of the 1807 varieties have the junction of the hair and the forehead below the center of the T. They are below the right foot or even further right. the outer inscriptions on the reverse are much too far away from the edge of the coin. The you and A are much too close to the ribbon ends for an 1807, the right stem it much to close to the A and is pointing at the left foot, something not found on any of the 1807's. These are just some of the very obvious things, the closer you look the more that is wrong with it. But you have to know your varieties because other than the rim/dentical thing the other features I mentioned could be perfectly acceptable on a different dated coin. The real key is to look at coins, look at coins, look at coins. Eventually your mind just becomes aware of what a genuine coin SHOULD look like. Then when a fake comes along you may not know why it is happening but you get an uneasy feeling and alarm bells start going off in you head. Something isn't right. You may not know what but it means you should dig deeper and ask for help. (Works for cherrypicking too. You see the common, uncommon, and scarce varieties all the time and eventually learn to recognize a lot of them on sight. Then when one of the truly rare ones happens by it doesn't fit, it doesn't look like all the others you've seen before, so it is either a fake or it is rare. Check it out to find out which.

Missed seeing that one as it has been pulled. Nice catch and ebay seems to be getting better at pulling these things in a timely manner.