Alert! Fake Silver, Especially Morgans

after reading a CoinWorld magazine about chinese fakes, I won't even buy morgans or Peace dollars. I stick with silver halves, quarters and dimes. I want to be able to sleep at night knowing my coins are real not fake.

biggfredd, Thanks for sharing this. As for me, I too won't buy anything coming out of China.

Thanks for info!

IF it looks to good check it out. Chinese counterfeiters start with copies and when they think they are good enough they leave the word copy off. Slick Dudes we are dealing with. Having had a problem in the past I realize these hoods have large quantity buyers in the US to accomplish there scheme. I bought problem coins from a US dealer on ebay. The only way I got my money back because counterfeit US coins were sent via US Mail. Federal Offense. If sent by UPS or FED-X it would have been almost impossible to get my money back. Any coin selling for over $100 usd should be suspect. STAY ALERT!!

odentheviking, thanks for that link. I am aware that the chinese have faked some smaller denominations but did not know about small valued coins like that barber. However with silver at 34ish, I expected the chinese to try and fake it however in general I believe halves, quarters, and dimes are much safer than the mass produced and faked morgans and peace that the chinese are making and sending here by the binfuls.

I doubt the coin in that ebay auction has the silver sound if you dropped it or banged it lightly with another coin to see the ring that silver makes.

People should just be careful and if the coins are too good to be true (some person selling BU barbers for melt on CL) then its probably too good to be true.

Quote: " it isn't that hard to detect the fakes BY SOUND. Silver "rings" when flipped like for heads-or-tails. Iron, pot metal and melted down old car parts don't. They can make it perfect visually, or nearly so, but they can't make it sound like silver. Unless, of course, they are using actual silver and looking for numismatic value, in which case you'd better know what you are doing."

Very true! The same dealer I posted above had Pillar Dollars and Mexico Cap and Rays that he claimed were 90% plus real Silver! That means you would have to get the coin and do a SG test and even then it might pass as Original.

Quote: "Find a dealer you trust on ebay and stick with them. They aren't all crooks and liars."

Very true again! (But atleast this guy was telling us they are fakes!).

Last year Bust Dollars out of China were the big ticket items, could not believe some were selling for as much as $700/$800, the pictures looked that good. But really a hidden cache of 200 year old dollars suddenly materializing in China? Not too surprising that the smaller denoms are now profitable. By the way, I use a PO Box for almost all of my numismatic e-Bay purchases, so sellers have to use USPS and like coin chaser said, it is a Federal offense to send counterfeit US coins through the mail system. The caveat is not to buy US coins from outside the US from unknown sources.

I feel like with ebay, paypal is really good about covering its customers...I wouldn't be to worried if I as using paypal.

Also, I wouldn't be worried about craigslist either. Nothing that bringing another morgan for size and weught comparison, and a scale wouldn't solve.