PCGS Announces Security Chip-Embedded Slabs To Protect Against Counterfeiting

If a crook can remotely scam scan a credit card within a range of 10 feet (and they can do this right now), then
they will find a way around this new security chip sooner or later.

You can protect the security chip by surrounding it with a tiny Faraday Cage, but then the chip will be impossible to read.

I keep my debit card in a Faraday Cage removable sleeve. Same with my Passport. Never had a credit card.

And copying a serial number or barcode only allowed them to fake that one slab as well, but they could make multiple fakes of that one slab (just don't put them all on the market at the same time). This is no different. The only improvement here is instead of harvesting serial numbers of barcodes off of images on websites, the counterfeit actually has to get his hands on the slab to read and record the chips signal to make the fakes. Can't do that off a website, but possibly could do it at an auction viewing.

Hi Condor, it isn't just at auction viewings that bad guys might get to handle the slab but at coin shows as well. I handled hundreds of coins and slabs at multiple dealers tables just this past weekend and had I had nefarious intentions I could of whipped out my phone to ostensibly verify a slab number but could of just as easily scanned any chip and take a photo of the coin to put a near enough looking lower grade coin in a fake slab.
I also passed by hundreds of slabs in dealers cases and they were often only under a foot away, so theoretically I could scan all those coins if BStrauss's friend provided me with his custom boosting device.
Plus what is to stop the bad guys just hacking into the system to copy anything they want. After all the Chinese are not only the number 1 counterfeiters but have government sanctioned hackers who have obtained everything from commercial secrets to a list of every US military members details.

Many IT departments are good, many (the majority) are not and security breeches are common what with many companies using outsourcing of IT, H1B visa holders (often Chinese) having access to sensitive info and cutting costs meaning the systems are not debugged or checked for weaknesses. Just 6 hours ago I tried to access my Australian government personal file and found oops it was down as they were trying to fix a problem. so if governments have IT issues (even with billions of dollars to spend to get things right) then what issues would a small non IT company (Collectors Universe) have in protecting against hackers who oftentimes have the backing of their government (China for instance) and access to the best hacking tools. And no matter how good the IT guys are they are using hardware and technology that is usually either made in China or has components such as chips from China (look at the security risk Huawei is and it along with all Chinese companies are bound by Chinese law to work for their government including spying and commercial espionage).
TrueViews are not that hard to match for many coins and I doubt you could spot the minute differences between many coins such as the bunch of graded coins (all BUnc so no toning differences) I have from the same die pair yet the difference in value between the MS67 and MS68 is a $20 coin verses a $400 coin. Heck if I wanted to I could crack out the $400 coin along with its chip and label and put a $20 coin with the genuine chip and label in a fake slab. So in that example it wouldn't even matter how good the chip or IT departments are.

Agreed. I am terribly sick of the negativity that always seems to come out in full force whenever PCGS does something new. This is a logical step in the right direction for the future. All these "what if" scenarios...... do you guys really think someone is going to go through all the nearly impossible trouble it would take to perfectly fake just one slabbed coin? I mean, really?

Are they going to fake a 1971-S proof Ike or an AU/MS draped bust silver dollar? Of the two, which would make the most sense in terms of potential profit? Of the two, which is likely to be in a prominent collection with a extensive history behind it? You see, the fakers are limited to only certain coins for this to be profitable anyway. They are not going to waste their time on coins. They just want numbers (cc, pins, ss, etc).

The sky is not falling. I promise.



You can't be serious. C'mon, man. Wrong. Just wrong.

Aptly put.

You guys say they are far fetched hypotheticals, not worth doing by state run entities and only worth doing on million dollar coins etc.
Yet I have a black box of PCGS encapsulated (genuine capsules, fake coins were graded) fakes, as well as PCGS slabs (genuine slabs) that were carefully opened and resealed without any telltale marks and fake slabs (would fool most dealers) containing genuine coins.
All of my fakes in genuine slabs were likely struck in China, ditto my fake slabs, ditto my collection of raw fakes. So Chinese state entities are permitting (or enabling) these fake coins to be made. Yes, they will only make a few hundred on each fake but if you have ever been to China (I have) you will see to what lengths they go to fake EVERYTHING to even make a few cents on each item.
My recent Shanghai trip happened a day before an international trade exhibition so the markets where I purchased my (fake) Italian shoes and passed up on (fake) Peace dollars and (fake) Gucci was to be closed by the government for a couple of days during the exhibition as they didn't want the delegates to see how rampant and blatant was the counterfeiting. So the government knew nearly everything there was fake but couldn't care less about stopping it.
I could have also purchased fake viagra, fake Johnny Walker and genuine carfentanil. Have to also wonder about the unused current US postage stamps that could be had for half face value or the current English 2 pound coins at half the exchange rate.

Chips like this might help you verify a slab in-person, but they won't help if you're buying on ebay or some other Internet platform. By the time you've got the coin in hand and can test that it's fake, the counterfeit-sellers have already taken your money and run.