Counterfeit Chinese Coins

Sorry SAP, just sweep around me, I'll catch up. Thanks for the link.

So how do you distinguish the real coins from the fake ones? Are these counterfeits real silver?

Cottage industry?.. Doesn't this make anyone here angry?

No worries, MDM - it's far better to regularly bring up important topics like this, rather than let it slip into the obscurity of the Archives.

No, it's highly unlikely any of the counterfeits are genuine silver. The lower class types are often brass; some are a kind of steel - not only are those underweight, but they'll stick to a magnet. The better quality fakes are made of a copper-lead-tin alloy that has the same density as silver - because it's density matches, it can be very convincing in hand - many many times I've seen folks here on the forum and elsewhere say that these fakes sound or feel "just like a silver coin does". The alloy often turns a pale brassy colour, so it's sometimes given a "silver" wash - which might be real silver, or could just as easily be something else, like mercury. Needless to say, neither the health of either the "factory workers" in China or the sucker Westerners that buy their "products" are particularly high priorities for the fakemasters that run these factories.

Are we angry? Sure. Is there a single thing we can do about it? Nope - not unless you're advocating an invasion of mainland China. As long as they don't copy current Chinese coins, they're not breaking Chinese law. The only thing "we" collectors can do is never buy a coin sourced from China, since the odds of a coin purchased from there being genuine are much, much lower than from just about anywhere else. The secondary market, of course, is where the real danger with these coins lies. These things are already arriving into Western countries by the containerload. Yet If someone selling coins like this were based in San Francisco, or Sydney, or London, you probably wouldn't think twice about bidding on them, because there would be nothing to connect those coins with China. Your only defence in this case is to become very familiar with the fakes, so you can spot them when they crop up in unexpected places.

So, is purchasing only slabbed coins the defense? It might help reduce, but doesn't eliminate, the risk - the fakemasters have heard of slabs, and it didn't take them very long at all to realise their profit margins could increase substantially by selling their best fake coins in fake slabs. See this thread for details.

One more reason for the necessity of having a forum for Repeditive Subjects or Same Old Items or Requently Posted Items or something like that.
Although many would miss it or igor it, it would so easy for everyone to just say look here.

Providing that you actually got away with the bombing, two more would probably spring up in its place. (Kind of like gray hairs...)

Of course many of their fakes are Pure Silver. Remember they are not trying to sell the coins for face value, but for coin value. So that little investment in Silver is nothing compared to a coin selling for hundreds of dollars or more.