Fake PCGS slab and 1916 D Mercury Dime

[KeeNoooo]

I'm glad you were able to return it without catching any grief! That could have ended alot worse than it did! Thanks for all the info from everyone on this thread. I have learned alot. I hardly ever really pay attention to they small details on the slabs! But then again I can't afford coins of that price range. Most likely the coins I buy won't be faked d/t the low cost. Either way, I'm surely going to look closer.

nick

[coinman_23885]

Lucky for him he was not in it for much. ???

 

 

so his rip turned into a got ripped?

 

Or he (the originally seller) could have made it himself; it's just one possibility...

 

 

[Bruceswar]

Right now I am a loss for words. I will just post these images and let you all comment away. I will be contacting PCGS ASAP. I do not want to reveal all the details yet as to how I came into this coin as I want to talk with PCGS first. Please note this is not bashing PCGS at all.

 

any updates?

 

 

ps, no instabans for life here for bashing PCGS

 

 

I guess I should update this.

 

 

I was at the fun show. I went to the PCGS booth pretty quickly. PCGS took the coin back with them. They were very nice and helpful. I got the coin back with a letter from PCGS telling me it was fake. The holder was scratched as "Bad Holder" "Void". I then traded back with the guy we got it from. He is going to swallow the loss. Lucky for him he was not in it for much. All ends well. Coin is now off the market.

 

Are you confident that the person you got the coin from was unaware that it was fake?

 

Sorry I missed this some months ago, but yes I am 100% sure this guy did not know it was a fake. He rarely deals in coins and only because I ask him does he deal in them at all. He generally trades music gear with us at our shop. (Not the coin shop I work at now)

[Andree B-migration]

Someone from Utica NY tried to trade this one with me today. It looks like a fake to me, and he wouldn't tell me if it's ever been graded..

 

The D looks to be in the wrong spot, and when I sharpened the photo, adjusted color, it looks like there is a partial S below and under it.

[MarkFeld]

Someone from Utica NY tried to trade this one with me today. It looks like a fake to me, and he wouldn't tell me if it's ever been graded..

 

The D looks to be in the wrong spot, and when I sharpened the photo, adjusted color, it looks like there is a partial S below and under it.

 

Besides the mint-mark, the first thing that caught my eye was how (overly) sharp and thin all of the bands look. Additionally, the letters are too flat looking. That coin is not genuine.

[mkman123]

That slab could really trick someone, looks very well done and you have to really look carefully or nit pick to figure out its a fake.....crazy!!

[L1ncolnF4n]

The messed up part is that it is in PCGS' cert. verification database, which means that the cert. verification service is pretty much useless.

 

Right now NGC has PCGS beat on that given that new submissions are images prior to leaving the facility. Though the images aren't great, they go a long way.

 

Counterfeiters are getting smarter...

[Conder101]

There is still the problem though that the NGC counterfeit slabs appeared in 2007 and the pictures didn't begin until late 2009 so there are twenty five years of slabs out there and three years of images. Also for verification a close up picture of the coin would be much more effective than a so-so scan of the whole slab.

 

Another thought, do they make a new image if a coin is reholdered? If not eventually I can see slabs being rejected as fake because when you look up the certificate number the slab in the picture doesn't match the slab in hand (Because it was reholdered into a later generation and kept the original number.)