Straits Settlements 5 Cents 1877

I can understand your reason for doubt: I have been shown a couple of quite excellent fakes of this type by a coin dealer, who really knows his stuff.
I haven't got the specialist skill or experience to pick this one, unfortuately.
Why do you doubt it?

It looks OK to me. I have to admit defeat someties, and this is one of those times.

Looks weird: http://www.NGCcoin.com/price-guide/...-duid-101178

The lack of a line in the "A" is concerning. However, the observe has the proper "A". I dunno.

Any possibility they could have reused die plates from previous years ? I've seen other years with the missing line in A too.

The lettering is not consistent is serif or rotation, check it carefully. The missing crossbar in the 'A' of 'Straits', and the first 'S' of 'Settlements' is slightly different in spacing, and first and second 'E' in 'Settlements' is different. The two '7's are a bit funky.

The 'C' in 'Cents' is rotated or cocked.

The other dead giveaway could be the price you paid for it. Catalog is $4,800 in my not-up-to-date Krause.

I got it from a LCS, the grading just came back, it's as fake as a Nigerian astronaut in space.

Lesson learnt, if it's too good to be true, it probably is, worse thing is I trusted my LCS implicitly. What a .

Plus and minus with fakes such as these.

Destroy it, and take it completely out of the circulation of collectors, so thet they cannot be defrauded.

Keep it, and display it widely such as happened here on the CCF for us all to see, and learn how to identify dangerous fakes.

Well worth keeping, if it IS indeed a fake.
Examine it closely for yourself to learn and know what to look for with such high quality fakes.

I have a specialist fake collection for just such a reason.

Don't get too 'dirty' with your local LCS, but show it to him anyway. It would have been very easy to be deceived with this coin; he should be very appreciative to learn from it himself.
If I was the coin dealer I would have bought it back, and kept it in my own reference collection of fake coins. I would have been happy to educate my customers with it, saying:
"Not for sale".
That is one way a LCS can build trust with his customers.


You must remember that thousands of coins pass through coin dealers every year, and that leaves not much time to examine every coin very closely. Even the best of professional coin dealers have to admit that they can be occasionally (although very rarely, fortunately) deceived by a high quality fake coin. The same could be said for those who slab coins; that is why they employ specialists for the various coin types.

Your local coin dealer is forced to be a generalist by the very nature of his business to enlarge his customer base, and therefore cannot be a specialist in all areas of numismatics.

I have the original piece of this straits 1877, 5 cents. They use my coin as sample to create fake coin. NGC also sent me an email on this issue by last year.