New Black Cabinet Feature In The Works: Certification Shield

Just tested the final iteration before it goes into beta and everything seems to be working properly. :-)

More news as it becomes available.

Sadly, the better mousetraps of TPGs gave way to better counterfeiting mice.

Hopefully this will prove to be an even better mousetrap. :-)

It's an unfortunate truth in our hobby that we must approach the counterfeiting problem in much the same fashion as the antivirus business approaches computer viruses - you can't be proactive so you have to be as efficiently reactive as possible. Get the fix out as fast as you can, and disseminate it as widely as possible. The fix in this case is the knowledge that counterfeits exist and the images which let you identify them.

It's war.

@KevinH - My current feelings in a nutshell:

1) I'd wager that as high as 80-90% of the new counterfeit coins coming onto the market are from China/AliBaba right now. The AliBaba website makes things far too easy to order fake coins in bulk overseas (AliBaba has in many ways completely changed the game for smaller Chinese manufacturers, much like how Amazon.com has changed the game for traditional publishers). The suppliers there also actively cater to the unscrupulous folks.

2) The biggest rate of increase in recent times was the Great Recession and the following boom of precious metals. Common dates became commonly counterfeited then because they were commercially feasible, and even when the prices of silver and gold have retreated the production hasn't because the boom left making the fakes cheaper. Furthermore, in the past decade, coin collecting is becoming a more prominent hobby in China (and PCGS has expanded there) so awareness of collectible coin values are up. With all of this in mind, my feeling is that we're looking at an exponential trend.

The biggest "bump" right now is that when the Russian ruble took a plunge in value, all of the sales of fake Russian gold and silver on AliBaba spiked hard.

3) Where there are an absolute *flood* of cheap fakes on the market (thankfully that are spotted easily and outweigh all of the good fakes) the quality is still getting much better as they use scanning techniques and CNC milling machines to make their dies. Their fake slabs are getting much better as well, and the combination of the two are fetching big prices on ebay.

I'd wager that in the next 10 years or so, we may have a serious number of "superfakes" on our hands that are, for all intents and purposes, identical unless one checks photographic records side-by-side for already certified examples and check for cosmetic differences. They'll be made from laser-scanned and machined dies, alloy to spec, and placed in slabs made from the exact same machinery as the ones used by TPGs. As the technology gets better and cheaper, the price of production for such things is no longer prohibitive.

Granted, these won't be mass-mass produced by the millions like the cheap fakes (the cheap fakes will always be easier to crank out in bulk for a good profit), but we're looking at a number in the tens to perhaps a few hundreds of thousands a year that will sell initially for a few hundred dollars a piece to be re-sold to a victim for a few thousand.

Hehe with Trade dollars I believe it was a matter of familiarity. They were made to circulate in the Orient to begin with, and it was relatively common for them to be originally "counterfeited" -- provided they had the same weight and fineness, because otherwise it would be fraud (not that it stopped some people). :-)

Out of all of the counterfeits out there, Trade dollars are grossly over-represented.

After that, presently the biggest demographic of fakes circulating are other faux silver dollars (with bullion value as the target).

This leads to the obvious next question: do PCGS and NGC make their slabs in plants in China? . I have a sickening feeling that they do. Because if they do they have only themselves to blame for the crap-storm that is about to hit them if your predictions are correct.

Alrighty, I'm now in a position to "Throw The Switch" on this feature. But I am still unsure about tier limits and pricing.

Right now it's sitting upon a "Standard" tier for roughly $4 a month ($50 yearly subscription) with a 50 coin limit and a "Pro" tier for roughly $17 a month ($200 yearly subscription) with no limit.

Should I level the field with a middle price and have only one unlimited tier? Should I change the lower tier limit?

What do you guys think?