Too Much Disclosure-Good Or Bad

It is something of a catch-22. We want to help people to identify counterfeits so they don't get ripped off, but have no real way of doing so without "helping" the counterfeiters improve their "products" as well.

All this talk of counterfeits no doubt "hurts" the hobby, scaring away newbies. However, not talking about counterfeits will hurt even more down the track when the newbie tries to cash in their valuable collection only to be told then that they're fakes.

Counterfeit Detection, whether it be in paper money or collectable coins, is always one step behind the counterfeiters. They're always going to come up with new and better ways of faking things, whether we "help" them or not. In my view, we might as well help people learn to spot the known fakes that are already out there, but the next generation of fakes will always be harder to spot.

With the internet all the information they could ever need is already out there. I sure wouldn't worry about them getting the information from collectors trying to keep a step ahead.

Too much disclosure is only a problem if the information is not already published elsewhere. When I comment on a forgery I will never disclose certain facts (those known only to myself) - until they have been published elsewhere. There are still some tricks of the trade.

The problem with forgers as someone has already pointed out is that they will improve their product as the market gets more perspective. A poorly educated marketplace will buy or accept garbage.

But I contend that that is EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT TO SEE HAPPEN.

A quick look back at the history of counterfeiting shows that when the target - a banker, merchant or collector - was uneducated almost anything could pass. As the target market got more educated the counterfeits had to be better to pass. This raised the cost of forgery and REDUCED the number of people capable of making them. As the process of education and improvement continues - most forgers will eventually not be able to keep up. The number of forgeries especially the cheaply made junk will drop.

So in my opinion, if every collector could become an expert to some degree in a particular coin series - the forgers would have to become experts themselves. Because if we can detect silver - the forgery has to become silver. If we know how the coin was made - the forger will have to adopt the same technology.

I know that forgery - often called the second oldest business after prostitution - will always be with us. But if we can force the forgers to make better and better copies - what happens? Their costs go UP drastically and the lower end forgers go out of business.

The cost of perfectly duplicating a known die pair for striking a new coin is very HIGH. The current level of technology being used in China is really still rather crude. There are very few modern counterfeits that are really difficult to detect in hand. The forgers need to exert MUCH GREATER efforts to getting their dies better. This all costs MUCH more. The forgers also need to abandon modern technology and employ old methods to get it right. That SLOWS production and RAISES COSTS. The cost of the material to make a perfect planchet is higher than you would think - it is more than the cost of pure silver and copper. It requires melting original coins (within a narrow date range for mine related mints) to duplicate the correct alloy and then it involves rolling and cutting planchets with old technology. All of this RAISES COSTS.

The end result is that the fakes will cost much more than they do now. The counterfeits will also be better looking much more like Museum Replicas.

They called him the "Omega Man" (sounds like a comic book super-villain)...google Omega Man in quotes, there's all sorts of sites out there about him. Supposedly his coins are perfect, except for the omega symbol he hid on the coin.

I assume this is a him, who knows.... he/she has never been caught

I think every collector should look at as many fake coins of all qualities to recognise what they look like. I have a fake gold eagle that is so good that two dealers of good repute that I took it to were not able to pick it.

I certainly did not have the skill to pick it. I got caught. It took me 18 months to expose it as fake. The fake is of a slightly scarcer date, and grades MS60. I bought it at an auction for only a small margin above bullion value.

I am keeping it for two reasons.

1) I bought it 4 years ago, and is worth quite a lot more now in melt value,
2) It is a very valuable fake reference.

The coin is of the correct diameter weight, and is .900 fine, .100 copper. Probably used a genuine coin as a donor.

I am very reticent to say how the dies for the fake were made, except I DO know now, how they were made. In this case, the dies were most probably made in the US.

The coin was definitively identified by going to a respected dealer, who referred to the files he had access to in the IBSCC. ( International Bureau for the Suppression of Counterfeit Coins.) My fake matched exactly the the photograph on the IBSCC file.

Why hasn't ebay put a stop to this?