PCGS Labeled Counterfeit 1741 Rouble Sells For $1,100. Why?

The listing is fraudulent, even with the picture.
At least there is a return privilege.
How can 16 bidders make 32 bids on this object? Is there some market for contemporary counterfeits of 1741 rubles?

Easy. Bidders frequently up their bid in small increments in succession to inflate the bid count in an effort to scare away other bidders. It's a very common tactic on ebay.

Doesn't this violate ebay's policy against counterfeit coins, even if it's explicitly called out as such?

Bobby
I see a basis for implication of scienter. Describing the coin as genuine while omitting to disclose it as counterfeit is both a mistatement and an omission of material fact. Knowledge would be inputed to the seller from possession of the holder disclosing true facts. Intent would be inputed from carefully omitting known material facts from the description. It is well-established that misrepresentation of the content or meaning of a document, the written facts reflecting the TPG's expert opinion, can support an action for fraud.

I've seen contemporary counterfeits go for thousands many times.




You're grossly overthinking it. Anyone that looks at that listing and doesn't know it's counterfeit is an absolute idiot, moron, or *insert favorite dumb person synonym here*. There is no way any person with a tenth of a brain could look at that listing and think it's real. No fraud here, move along....

No contemporary counterfeits were struck this well during that time frame, so forget that line of thinking.

"Counterfeit" in this case means MODERN (numismatic fake). I'd guess that some optimistic, lotto-loving soul is hoping beyond hope that PCGS was wrong.

I was curious and took a look, and indeed, there was nothing remarkable about the early bidding (see play-by-play below). The first 13 bidders and 20 bids were done before it hit $175 (probably the ones who would pay that much for what they knew to be a counterfeit). Then there was a single $500 bid, and it looks like it took the next bidder 9 tries to figure out he had to go that high ... and was sniped at the end by the 16th bidder.
What WAS remarkable was that buyers would take a chance on a "5,000 Retail" coin sold by a seller of religious books who has only one other coin sale in his feedback: a recent sale of another Russian counterfeit.
(It looks like someone has decided that selling counterfeit coins is more lucrative than selling bibles).

Play-by-play
- First bidder put in a bid of $69 which registered at starting bid of $0.99.
- Bidder2 (novice with only 34 fb) tries to top this with 6 sequential bids, finally dropping out at $39.
- Bidders 3-9 each place a single bid till the last one tops the first bidders original bid at $77. In the meantime, the first bidder has put in two more new bids ($99 and $129).
- Bidder 10 tops the original bidder at $133, who does not return. Bidder 10 is in turn exceeded by bidders 11 and 12, each entering a single bid to get us up to 12 bidders and 19 bids, at $141 (less than 15% of the final bid).

Now it gets interesting, probably reflecting bidders who missed the fact this coin is a counterfeit.
- Bidder 13 places a bid of $501, but retracts it the next day.
- By the time of the retraction, Bidder 14 enters with a $500 bid.
- Bidder 15 tries 8 times to beat bidder 14, finally surpassing on the 9th try, at $550.
.. only to be outdone 8 hours later by Bidder 16, who places a bid that we can only guess, because even when bidder 15 DOUBLES his previous bid to $1,111, Bidder 16s bid is still high enough to win.

Contemporary counterfeit.
1741 ruble.
Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha hahahahahahahaha...

This type was officially forbidden to own, with harsh penalties if found, for decades after 1741. There's a well-documented case from around 1770 (I forgot the exact date) where a guy accidentally missed one of those rubles getting slipped to him in circulation, and despite extensive defence, still got the full punishment.

This means that, unless we're dealing with the ludicrously rare coincidence of a counterfeiter making the very newest type (already unlikely) and the resulting coin surviving the next few decades (extremely unlikely), any counterfeits of the 1741 ruble would have been deliberate forgeries to fool collectors.