Fake Coins Submitted To The Grading Companies

Yes, it's my understanding they're returned to the submitter.

I am a little confused.
Isn't it illegal to ship fake and or counterfeits into Canada?
Wouldn't PCGS or NGC or whoever was shipping the coin back into Canada be committing a crime?

Still confused. I know of a friend who deliberately submitted a counterfeit Henning nickel and received it back in a slab noted as such.

Not that familiar with Henning nickels, but have they achieved their own collectible niche, like JOP counter-stamped dollars? Just my guess of why a US TPG would grade a fake coin.

The slabbing companies always send back the fake coins to the submitter.

The slabbing companies are not acting as expert witnesses in a court of law; they are not offering a legally binding opinion on a counterfeit. The coins submitted to them do not belong to them, and they are contractually obligated to attempt to return the coins to the owner in the condition that they received them (so they aren't allowed to deliberately mutilate them, either).

Nobody would use slabbing companies if the slabbing companies started unilaterally seizing, mutilating or destroying coins they believed to be fake.

In the cases where they slabbing company returns a coin known to be counterfeit (and theoretically able to be proven so in a court of law), to a person in a country like Canada where importing fake coins is illegal, I suspect the legal workaround is that you, the submitter, legally own the coin at all times - so from that point of view it is you, not the slabbing company, who is doing the importing of a fake coin into Canada, you're just asking the slabbing company to ship it for you. At the moment of import, you are the only person inside Canada who is aware of the fakeness of the coin - the slabbing company is certainly under no obligation to notify the Canadian government of their opinion of its authenticity on its shipping dockets. It is therefore up to you the owner, not the slabbing company, to comply with Canadian law and report yourself and/or your coin to the appropriate authorities.

Received a rare German pattern that was returned in an NGC body
Bag w/ notation " Questionable authenticity "

Absolutely correct. But since you are the legal owner of the coin in question, it is you who is doing the importing, not the TPG. The TPG is just following your instructions to return the coin to you. It is up to you to tell the TPG to send the coin somewhere else (or throw it in the bin, or whatever), if you do not wish to attempt to import a counterfeit coin into Canada.

You cannot expect the TPGs to be aware of all the many and varied national laws regarding shipping of counterfeits, or of coins generally, in all of the countries that could possibly submit coins to them. The only laws they are legally obliged to obey are the laws of the country where the business operates. And American law says shipping counterfeit coins is legal, so long as no fraud is involved.


They are indeed. Canadian anti-counterfeiting law is rather unique, in both its breadth of scope (all counterfeit coins are illegal, whether they be Canadian or not), and the near-complete lack of exceptions for coin collectors who might have legitimate reasons to deal in counterfeits (no replicas marked COPY, no fantasies, no contemporary circulating counterfeits, etc).

All of which raises the interesting corollary question: what do the Canadian TPGs do with counterfeit coins? Because legally, they aren't allowed to return them. Unlike the American slabbers, a Canadian-based company is obliged to obey Canadian law. I couldn't see anything on the ICCS website or their PDF submission form about their counterfeits policy.