Silver Pillar Dollars From China?

This sort of situation is a sad one.
I am happy to buy a fake coin provided that is actually sold a fake. The acquisition of a 'black' collection is a good way on how to educate oneself, and build the skill necessary to detect them.
One of the increasing problems is that the best quality fakes are being sold as genuine. That is why the situation is sad.

Best quality fakes from China are getting harder and harder to determine conclusively if they are fake or not.

The ante needs to be lifted. What is needed is a publication which reports on the metal analyis of pillar dollars, looking from trace elements only, not silver.
The sort of volume research needed is now possible with the increasing use of hand held XRF instruments. They are becoming increasingly available through bullion dealers and the more professional coin dealers.

The original refiners of the silver for Pillar dollars were not as efficient as are the modern refiners, and so there is a 'fingerprint' of trace elements left behind for the modern researcher and coin dealer to find.

Same applies with ancient gold and silver coins.



So, what is the deal? ONLY buy a fake coin if it is agreed by both parties that it is indeed a fake.
Most of my 'black' collection has come through dealers with decades of experience who have trusted me NOT to re sell them. You need to establish a good rapport with a dealer over decades to build that trust.

Thank you gentlemen for honest if not harsh replies. I'm going to have to think about this for a while.......
But my first response is "WOW!"
Just plain "WOW!"
It's like all the fun of finding and collecting counterfeit pillar dollars has been ripped out of this and exchanged for pure profit.
Makes me think of just selling my whole collection on ebay while it has a high value....... Buyer beware right?
My favorite coins that I collected where the ones that the seller truely thought they were real, and most the bidders did also. I would contact the seller and tell them my belief and offer a "copy" price if the auction winner returned the coin.
But that can't happen any more under this system.
I think this is what happens when folks start to collect coins as an "investment" and not because they truely love the coins.
I will have to think about this.

odentheviking As a US seller on ebay (or ebay - which I kind of like) do not sell numismatic forgeries and spend the money too quickly. Let the buyer beware protects ebay not re-sellers. If you sell a forgery with no warning, the buyer can still make a claim for a refund. If you refuse to refund or do not reply to the buyer (as most fraudulent dealers do), the claim goes to ebay as a Case. Then ebay will contact you. They will negotiate for the buyer and YOU WILL PAY INCLUDING SHIPPING COSTS BOTH WAYS or have your access to ebay terminated. LIKELY FOREVER. Remember ebay knows your name - address etc..

Most of the forgers make up names (literally by the thousand) - pair them with stolen bank records of elderly people. They take their identity, address and bank account numbers and set up a fraudulent existence on ebay and PayPal too. (The actual people never realize the PayPal account exists because there are no significant transfers of funds - it remains invisible). The forger waits until the account ages (so the new guy Icon does not appear) - then they run a few sham deals with other names in the same ring. They exchange positive feedbacks for items never actually bought or sent (they are usually low ticket prices but in any event the fees don't matter - they are small potatoes). When the feedback reaches 10 to 12 - they start posting as a seller. They post fakes at low starting prices - shills drive up the prices when any bidder appears usually using tiny increments to hook the bidder - winners end up paying $50 each for say 12 or 24 coins for about 2 -3 weeks. The biggest single rip off I saw was $25,000 in two weeks. All the money sent to PayPal (which most sellers prefer) is sent via straw accounts making similar transactions between a chain of names (all fakes) and the money ends up in the Beijing factory to pay for a fictitious high ticket price item. The payments always end at the same address - a well known place (at least well known to ebay, the managers and members of the watch group).

As soon as claims from disgruntled buyers start pilling up - these guys fold their tents and disappear - but only for that ONE NAME. They have dozens more - pre-aged waiting to go. A few people can handle everything.

The bag is left with ebay. They will of course terminate access to ebay for the person whose identity was stolen. We once had the RCMP actually raid a home in Canada because we figured it was a main transfer point but it was just an old couple who didn't even own a computer. Since there is no direct effect on their bank account, the person whose identity was stolen is never even aware of the theft. That is unless the elderly person tries to start an ebay account for the folks in the rest home. Then they have to explain and make an appeal to ebay.

There were of course a myriad of problems with the former system but we did try to establish linkages between names by matching names listed in feedback and matching photographs used in the initial feedback items. For one group, I had identified and reported as many as 200 related IDs PER WEEK. The group had generated literally thousands of names - traced back to one source - and just before we were ready to pounce (so to speak) we, the members of the committee and the manager, were terminated. We were never even told we were fired. One day all the IDs and access channels simply disappeared. If I had not gotten personal email addresses before hand from my manager, I might never have known what happened.

Another issue that used to tick me off was that I would get the actual buyer's name and contact them in the name of ebay - telling them that an item they had bought was a forgery. In 90% of the cases where I did the follow up personally, the buyers who had been duped said they had learned a great lesson but they would not claim against the seller. About 80% had already posted positive feedback in these exchanges - proving to me that the buyers didn't know or didn't want to admit being taken.

I never figured out why that percentage was so high, but I suspected at least some of the buyers planned to pass the fraud along by selling the coin to someone even less experienced. I have no real proof of that except from discussions and emails with buyers. I was surprised by the ethics of anyone who would just pass along the fraud to cut his own losses. So I had developed a decent database of these folks (I planned to terminate any who re-posted a known fake on their own) when I was advised that what I was doing was outside the scope of what the committee was to do. I received several warnings for making these kind of contacts and for over reaching. I was told you are NOT ebay POLICE, your job is to vote on coins reported to ebay ONLY. I was advised to stop batch reporting fraud internally. I had to file individual reports as an ebay member. Only about 50% of these reports ever resulted in termination and of course the reason or action could not be reported to me because of privacy concerns.

I guess you can tell I am still frustrated even though almost two years have past since we were let go.

Oden - you said:




Collecting counterfeits can be fun and profitable if what you are buying are actual COUNTERFEITS. In about 11 years of being active on ebay and screening EVERY single Spanish Colonial auction every day for 8 years, I can say with good confidence that I have seen no more than 6 actual Contemporary Circulating Pillar (Dos Mundos) Dollars posted on ebay. I believe I won 5 of the 6.

Dos Mundos counterfeits are VERY RARE. Forgeries of Dos Mundos Dollars are excessively common. At least 3 of 4 auctions of Dos Mundos 8Rs involve some form of ebay violation - normally forgery.

Portrait Pillar Dollars are slightly different. Only 3 or 4 out of 10 are fraudulent. There are many more counterfeits too. These Counterfeits are collectable and valuable. The forgeries (the frauds) are basically worth melt.

Spanish American Republican coins vary by country - some like Mexico have high numbers of counterfeits (exceeding the numbers of forgeries) while others like Chile or Argentina the reverse is true.

Make sure you can distinguish Contemporary Circulating Counterfeits from Numismatic Forgeries - they are drastically different in rarity and value.

BUT YOU CAN HAVE FUN WITH FORGERIES - YOU WILL JUST NOT ACHIEVE A PROFIT.

Thanks for the details on your time with ebay, swamperbob. You've mentioned some of this in your other posts but never to this depth (or maybe I've missed it).




I was contacted twice about pillar dollars that I purchased, however I was simply warned that the seller was known to sell forgeries. I was not told that the coin in question was thought to be fake and the person that contacted me did not identify themselves at all let alone as being officially associated with ebay. Frankly, I was confused and suspicious -- the only other post auction communications that I had were fraudulent second chance offers. Perhaps that explains the low return rate. In my case, one was certified by NGC but the other was rejected by both NGC and PCGS.

I have made returns but some I held onto for too long. I plan on buying a COPY stamp and marking the several pieces of junk that I've acquired when I sell them off to claim my capital loss.

swamperbob said


Yes, I'll post some photos in a new thread, although the subject of this thread is likely to be valid.

After pulling together a nice collection of pillar dollars from mostly raw examples, I have a better feel for identifying the legitimate ones. The two I mentioned do look suspicious to my better trained eye (even the slabbed one).

Here is a nice gross fake in a slab, to illustrate swamperbob's says . it's actyally the worse I've seen (anyone knowing those coins from far or being able to check a book or recent auctions will figure out there is something wrong)