1900 Counterfeit Barber Half Dollar

That's actually a pretty good reason to do it. Either it's a contemporary counterfeit (created while the coins were in circulation), made to circulate as "real" money - remember, 50 Cents was a fair amount of cash in 1900. Or, it's a modern counterfeit, made at a cost of less than a penny and sold for $10 worth of pure profit, and as a "common" coin, unlikely to generate as much attention as, say, a Saint Gaudens counterfeit would. If you mint a few thousand like that, and sell them on ebay, you make decent money.

And that's precisely what the Chinese counterfeiters are doing.

Dave - My experience with fakes on ebay is that they go after the key / semi-key dates but the coins were worn to F-VF condition. If you saw those dies they had, the ones that stood out were the British Sovereign, assorted Flowing Hair and Draped Bust dollars and halves and 1889-CC Morgan.

And how do I know this is the real Pennypusher responding? I want proof!

But yeah--pics might help us tell if it's a recent forgery; a contemporary would be very interesting--and worth the $10.

In China everything is faked - including the slabs. There's an interesting article with slide show posted on about.com. Just Google: 'Chinese Counterfeiter Strikes a Fake Silver Coin' and enjoy the pictures. The only way to have a reasonable chance of avoiding fakes is to carry a scale and weigh the coins.If they're slabbed weigh an empty slab and subtract it's weight from the total.
Also NEVER buy coins from ebay when the seller is located in China. Taiwan has few fakes [I think] but on July 4 direct flights began after a hiatus of nearly 60 years. And as mainland Chinese can now enter Taiwan as tourists the shady dealers will follow.

If it isn't a high grade coin (and for $10 I don't think it would be.) then it is probably a contemporary counterfeit like Superdave said. While we wouldn't think of counterfeiting a half dollar today to circulate it, back around 1900 a half dollar represented about half a days pay for a non skilled or semi-skilled worker. (Think of it as being the same as counterfeiting a fifty dollar bill today.) And when they were making the counterfeits they weren't just making one coin. If they were casting they could probably use a multiple coin mold and make a few hundred an hour. If they had a press and were striking them they could make between a thousand and eighteen hundred an hour. (To put it back in modern terms, your printing press is turning out from $40,000 to $90,000 in fifty dollar bills an hour. Sounds worth it.) The real problem becomes how to move the fakes fast enough to make it worthwhile, while at the same time not drawing attention to yourself.

ok the term contemporary counterfeit intrigues me. I also have a counterfeit posting up today. How can anyone tell when it was counterfeited? are there tests for that? are there counterfeits that are actually valuable?

Contemporary Counterfeit is used to mean a counterfeit made at roughly the same time period in which the coin was in common circulation and which was intended to circulate at face value cheating the merchant. Typically these coins are cast in base metal and were often plated or coated to resemble the proper metal. Usually they are crude and would be easily recognized if looked at closely. (These coins were often passed in areas that ere not well lit or in markets that were very busy so the merchant did not have to time to look at them closely.

This is in contrast to the numismatic counterfeit which was made in order to sell to coin collectors at a significant profit above face value. These counterfeits are usually struck and come in two main categories, the tourist counterfeit, and the coin collector counterfeit. The tourist counterfeits are often in either base metal or lower fineness than the real coins and usually are fairly close in appearance to the genuine coins. They also often can be found with non-existent date/mint combinations and even sometimes mismatched obv/rev mules.

The coin collector counterfeits tend to be key date/mint combinations and are often of even higher quality and in the proper alloy and are intended to be sold for their key date premiums.

There is some overlap among these categories, for example the middle east gold counterfeits of the 1950' and 60's which were tourist counterfeits even though they were mostly common date coins but made of full weight and the proper fineness of gold. (The counterfeiters were making their money on the difference in value between what common generic gold coins were selling for and what the bullion value of the fakes were.) And sometimes the low quality tourist counterfeits or a contemporary counterfeit can be found with a key date/mint combination.

Are there counterfeits that are actually valuable? Oh yes, a few examples Contemporary counterfeit bust halves are often collected by die variety and they are often worth MORE than the genuine coins in the same condition.

Then there are the Machins Mills counterfeit British half pence. These can be worth hundreds of dollars.

Several of the die varieties of our state coinages from the 1780's are actually contemporary counterfeits. They are quite valuable.

There are hundreds of contemporary counterfeit varieties of Conder tokens listed in Dalton and Hamer and they ae collected right along with and valued similarly to the genuine tokens