1984 Engelhard Prospector's - Fakes Or Real?

I was on vacation this weekend and decided that there was nothing I wanted to buy until we stopped in a jewelry store to look at some watches for my son. I of course asked them if they had any Silver, junk or bullion. Well they had some Prospectors, 1984 with the Big E Reverse. I only had one in my collection, a 1984 with the Eagle Reverse. Looking at these things, they were perfect as in they looked like they just came off the press. I asked the price and was told these come with premiums, so he wanted $24 for each. He had 20 or so. I know that is too much but there is no tax on bullion in that state so I decided to go ahead and get two. First I asked for his scale as I had heard there were some fakes out there. We took the two that I picked out to a scale and each was 31.1g. Exactly what they needed to be and I knew the fakes that were out there were 21g. I asked also to flip them and they sounded right. So I bought them and proceeded on my way.

That is until I got to the motel room and used my phone's internet to do a little digging. That is when I found out that there was a second generation of them out there. These 1984's are in the Weight Tolerance but thicker. I was worried and then kept flipping it to 'hear' what it sounded like. After about an hour of reading and flipping I had convinced myself they were fake. The fakes look proof and yet mine did not, MS67+ yes but not proof. So I then convinced myself I would not go back and ask for a refund and would take my lumps if they were fake. I needed to wait till I got home to double check these guys.


This is going to be a long thread but hopefully someone will use there GoogleFoo and use what I have found as a reference in the future.

Here is a thread on Kitco that tells of the first generation of these with pictures,

https://www.kitcomm.com/showthread....ounds-Thread

Here is another with pictures,

http://www.goldismoney2.com/showthr...und-recently

And of course here is a thread on CoinTalk that covers the subject also,

http://www.cointalk.com/threads/cou...ning.202941/


I know this is not what I have so I had to dig deeper.....Here was one particular post with lots of information and some of the details I sought out,

http://forums.collectors.com/messag...eadid=900129

In this one is a picture that helped me a lot.....This was exactly what I was after...as mine were not proofs per se but they were much much nicer than I the one I already had.






So armed with this information, I got home and did some verification. First a picture of what I bought. Keep in mind that I have at least flipped it 50 times listening and thinking so this one is not pristine anymore but the other is.








Notice the right hand thumb, this was missing on some of the fakes, well I thought I was ok. That was until I read the 2nd generation fixed that issue. They also fixed the gap in the circle around the E on the Reverse. The Chinese are getting very good.

Here is a link to what they are selling now, notice the right thumb.....fixed.

ht tp://w ww.alibaba.com/product-detail/USA-The-America-Prospector-One-Troy_1130992142.html




The dots around the reverse are further away/spaced from the side but without one to compare to in hand, it would be hard to be sure.


So here is what mine looked like with the tools that I have, WEIGHT : CHECK



DIAMETER : CHECK



THICKNESS : CHECK >>>> This was my worry as the new fakes are just a wee bit thicker.



So this has me feeling better now but I wanted to check it against my other one, and so I did..








At this point I am convinced that what I had purchased is real. I paid too much for it but I never come across these and I will NOT buy them from ebay unless I know the seller. I know some sellers that could be fooled by these new ones. There is not much talk about them anymore and I think some would be embarrassed to admit they got burned, I just do not know.

However I think the two I purchased are real, at least everything I can see leads to that conclusion.
They even pass my neodymium magnet test. I thought I got burned but I got lucky and in the process I educated myself much better on these.


I hope this helps someone..


PS I had to check my scales as these new ones are 31.1g and you can never be too sure....