1889-CC Morgan Dollar PCGS MS-63. How Scary Is This?

ALWAYS look at the font on the label well. A comparison will tell you that the font is wrong on the bogus coin. I admit I have a long background in proofreading and literature production so I have an eye for that sort of thing, but the font is dead wrong.

Nonetheless I also carry around a really useful pocket book to every show, Bill Fivaz's Counterfeit Detection Guide (2001) and make extensive die notes on genuine key-date coins to add to what Fivaz has written already. And I have decades of experience looking at coins. If you don't know any of the die markers of the most commonly seen 1889-CC Morgan dollar die pairing, you have no business buying such coins off of ebay.

"Buy the book before the coin."

PS I note this ebay guy also has zero feedback and doesn't even list a grade or call it an auction -- it's an "ad." How many red flags do we have here?

Best Regards,

George

I have said it before, it is due time (as the technology is here and cheap) that slabs need RFID chips in them to give critical data about the coin that can be verified electronically. Verifying a slab by "old school" visual queues is so easy to replicate today that I don't understand why the TPGs haven't gone to this on high end coins years ago. A new and more sophisticated technology for verification is way over due

@Conder101 and @unholyroller I couldn't agree more with both of you. The font is certainly not a foolproof method but if you compare with other slabs from the same generation it helps. And RFID, great idea whose time has come. I think our credit cards this year are going to be getting something like that in them as well.

Best Regards,

George

Troubling indeed. This just solidifies my appreciation for the efforts this forum's members make to keep their fellow collectors informed about nefarious garbage like this.

ET

That label is killing me... I hope no one who owns a PCGS coin would actually fall for that.

absolutely an RFID chip can be duplicated, but the info can be encrypted so that only the issuing TPG can authenticate it. An RFID reader can be easily acquired (and cheaply) and hooked up to a computer for online verification. This info couldn't be copied unless you had the original in hand. Anything is able to be copied, but being RFID is "invisible" you couldn't simply match a barcode that you can see online with just an image. To copy and RFID you would need the original in hand which just makes it that much more difficult to copy.

If the TPG encrypts the RFID as they should, it's useless to anyone but them anyway. And it's not difficult to image a coin in such detail as to make identification easy. Any of you could do it for less than $500 in equipment.