Japan Trade Dollar (Counterfeit)

83% feedback score.

The biggest giveaway is the overall luster of the coin as well as the edge.

While it seems to be in XF+ condition, coins from that era never had that dull grey look. Secondly, while the edge is reeded, it's just too soft. Again, you need to handle examples to have a good idea what a genuine example should look like. Understandably such Trade dollar coins are scarce to start off with but the overall appearance should look very similar to a standard 1 yen coin with the exception that it's slightly bigger and heavier.

I just noticed something. I wonder if it's just a coincidence that both that one that just sold and the buy it now one (still awaiting a taker) are both supposedly coming out of Inglewood, California?

This is sadly true. The folks who jump at these "bargains" need to blame themselves first. They are greedy and foolishly think they know more than the seller about what is being sold. I have no sympathy for the buyers. The sellers however are a different story. They are committing fraud. The first fraud often becomes a second fraud when the buyer tries to "cut his losses" dishonestly by re-selling the coin. This is one reason, I lack sympathy for most of the greedy people who fall for this scam.

Is there a way to stop the sellers?


In 2013 just before the Coin Watch Committee at ebay was terminated, we had uncovered an earlier generation of this scam. I personally identified over 100 different IDs in Canada and the western US that shipped from only two locations Beijing, China and San Diego, Cal. All of the seller IDs were linked via the money trail to one location. I had even secured photos of examples of the packaging from ebay members that had been scammed and they were all identical. The coins were identical. Photographs were often shared. Feedback received by these IDs came predominantly from one another and items these sellers "purchased" were often identical. All financial transactions for purchases and sales ultimately linked back to a SINGLE account in Beijing. I had located the two shipping sites - had street addresses and google images of the locations. Other committee members and our manager had located hundreds more of the IDs - all similarly linked. When the manager asked that this group of linked sellers be removed - upper management at ebay balked and shortly thereafter the committee was disbanded as a result of pressure exerted by the Beijing seller among others. There are similar groups operating in Spain and eastern Europe.

As time passes and nothing is done to stop them - their numbers are only expanding.

I know ebay does not care. They take down a few hundred or even a few thousand auctions and pass that off as doing "what they can to stop fraud". It is a total waste of time - a smokescreen to appease the masses.

If you believe that ebay actively monitors to stop fraud then you have failed to recognize the second rule of ebay:

Yes, that's a muddled place of origin at best, rather like somebody ineptly changed it. But the price was in British Pounds and it's supposed to be shipped via the Royal Mail, so I'm thought the U.K. part was the truest part of that line. That said, the shipping costs at the end of the listing are expressed in Euros. In any case, it's now sold.