The Hobby Needs Your Help.....Please Read......Your Input Is Needed

[numismaniac-migration]

I'm interested in starting a group to work towards the prevention of counterfeit coins.I would be interested in working with lawmakers as well as ALL of the grading services to prevent counterfeits from reaching the marketplace. I feel this could be achieved through education, as well as the adoption of laws and anticounterfeiting measures. At the wholesale and retail level ,dealers could all participate strictly through adherence to a code of conduct, such as PNG's policies.

I would really appreciate any input you could offer me. If you are interested in volunteering, or have any NPO experience, I would appreciate your help. Suggestions are very welcome. Please e-mail me at rothschild28@comcast.net with your feedback.

[James_OldeTowne]

What are you defining as "counterfeit" coins?

 

James

[numismaniac-migration]

Hi James : If you're ever on E-bay, you have probably seen coins like "1804 silver Dollar replicas", and such, which have "copy" stamped somewhere on them. This is in compliance with the "hobby protection act of 1973" ?I'm not sure if I'm correct here as far as the name of the law. What I'm specifically referring to as far as counterfeits go, is what's being produced today, predominantely in China. These are coins slabbed & raw, being very accurately reproduced. I'm not sure of the production methods being used,but I can say with a fair degree of certainty that they are good enough to fool collectors. These contemporary counterfeits are manufactured solely with the intention of deceiving people.

I can provide a perfect case of an E-bay seller, located in China who's been selling coins which I know proof-positive to be fake. These are all either PCGS or NGC morgan dollars (mostly common dates, a few CC's, all in mint state grades). I clicked on the "ask seller a question" link, and e-mailed him this : How did these coins come to China? How long have you had them? , more out of curiosity than anything else. The reply I got was this: My grandfather brought them back in the 1920's, and I've had them like this for 50 years. A time-travelling PCGS holder ?How does one come to own a graded coin almost 40 years before the grading service even exists ?I contacted E-bay, as well as NGC & PCGS in the hopes that they'll get it straightened out. In the meantime, I'm interested in starting some sort of organization with the intent of protecting or at least trying to protect our hobby from this sort of thing as much as possible.The thing to remember is that not everyone knows as much about coins as some of us do. We were all starting out once-upon-a-time. If we could keep one person from getting burned by a crook and soured on the hobby, then it's all worthwhile, right ?

[Joel-migration]

I read an article recently that addressed this issue. The coins weren't actually in the holder, the picture of the coin was superimposed over the holder. Two things to look for where: the coin was the wrong size in relation to the holder, the #'s didn't match the coin shown.

 

Could this be what you are referring to? Maybe someone can remember the specific article and where to find it.

 

Joel

[James_OldeTowne]

I think the most important thing you'll need to do to promote your purpose is to produce actual slabs (PCGS, NGC, ANACS, SEGS or ICG) that actually contain counterfeit coins. I believe the fakes currently coming out of China, while "good" enough to fool inexperienced collectors, should not be good enough to fool any of the five certification companies I listed. However, it's certainly possible that fake slabs with fake coins in them are being produced!

 

Can you link samples of any of those five slabs with an actual fake coin in it?

 

James

[BankNote1]

Numis.'

Are you saying the seller said that the coins were graded and slabed 50 years ago? Did you look up the numbers and checked if they matched with PCGS NGC?

As far as a new organization to foil counterfeiters I thought that the ANA was working in that direction?

What is this sellers ID? I would like to look up these coins myself.

I agree with James you are going to have to have proof.

[Leothelion]

The largest obstacle is getting the word out on the do's and don't's associated with any product! If your campaign consist of no more then a sign on a bourse table or an article in one of the numismatic periodicals (complete thought with yours). Those who have been in the consumer market who have taken their hits and have learned the hard way, they know all about, "buyers beware". It's the newcomers, novice investors and buyers, the public who are the ones who get burned! To my understanding, the ANA already has a 1 year guarantee against counterfeit coins. And a 30 day return policy! Getting everyone in that mindset to follow those rules would be a miracle!

Just think of it, No-one can buy or sell coins unless they belong to the ANA! Yeah, right!

 

Another suggestion would be to set up a fund for certifying possible rip-offs for the clueless who have money to burn and no brains!

 

Leo

[numismaniac-migration]

Thank you all for your ideas,concerns,thoughts, and opinions. I'm going to try to answer as many questions, as directly as possible. I'll run down the list by post. Please feel free to e-mail me by clicking the link above.

I'll start with Joel :

I too am familiar with sellers who will take a picture of a raw coin, and superimpose it on a pic of a coin in a holder.While I do see this as nothing short of dishonest, this isn't what I'm referring to. (see below)

James_EarlyUS : You hit the nail right on the head ! I'm referring EXACTLY to fake coins in fake slabs being sold as real (REAL PRICES).You're absolutely right in saying that they most likely will not fool ANY professional grader. It is however a serious threat to our hobby/way of life when you stop and consider that this can do tremendous damage to our relationships with dealers, other collectors,novices,etc.Not to mention the threat to prices. I have spoken with reps from both NGC and PCGS who have seen the fake coin/fake holders . Unfortunately, because a lot of this type of forgery is done in China, it is hard for law enforcement here to catch these guys.I know that unders China's own trade laws/anything manufactured before 1950 whether made in China,or manufactured prior to 1950 and imported to China, cannot be exported out of the country. These coins were(made b4 1950), IF they're real. So from a legal standpoint, the forgers are violating domestic and international trade rules, copyright law, forgery, theft by deception, ad nauseum.I could go on for days about all of the multifaceted lawbreaking.(You'd think they were politicians )

Bank Note1: I don't want to provide the sellers username here, only because on a public venue, it's defamation; If you e-mail me,I'll provide you with something even better; A website I put up this morning showing e-mails between myself & E-bay,and the seller himself. At this point, it's not conclusive proof, but I'm working on it.

Leo : You are 100% correct. A lot of us have learned the hard way(me included). What I'm concerned about is the fact that; Holders as a whole, are not technological marvels, and could be very easily faked. What bothers me in a major way, is how this market(coins),will probably become saturated with fakes,which will cost us dearly.Even experts get fooled occasionally, and when you're in the market for a '79 clear CC in 65 Morgan , that's not exactly chump change, at least not to me.The buyer beware motto is exactly right. The problem is sites like Ebay (which can be a pain in the @ss to navigate) don't really do much of anything to make people aware of the fact that a tremendous amount of forgeries/reproductions are being sold as the genuine thing (in a lot of markets, not just coins).For me , the bottom line is that there should be a "Buyer Beware" popup which at the very least states China's export laws concerning antiques,which coins are a pseudo-classification of.

I'm not at all saying we should work towards placing resrictions on who can buy and sell, I'm merely suggesting a legitimate attempt to bring all of these organizations together to the table to unite and work against counterfeiting; (The International Brotherhood Of Counterfeit Coin Prevention, Local 1282, ). It would be an uphill battle, but if there are NO disadvantages to membership, then what would stop you, or anyone else from joining? After all, you'd be working towards a goal which is beneficial to all of us, yourself included.The floodgates in this situation(counterfeiting) are going to open wide as trade barriers are removed in the name of globalisation & free trade.I agree that getting people to play ball is the hard part, but a change in attitudes & perception could make it possible.*******Absolutely LOVE The "Counterfeit Coins For The Clueless" idea******

 

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR INPUT !

[James_OldeTowne]

numismaniac, count me in. Any helpful links you could email/pm me would be appreciated!

 

I have a somewhat related article on my website. Go to my articles page and click on "How easy it can be to get fooled by a counterfeit!".

 

THANKS for your interest in betterment of the hobby! I just hate to see good people get ripped off by scammers like this!!!!!!

 

James

[BankNote1]

This looks to me to be NGC's and PCGS' problen to me. What are they doing to combat this?

If the stuff is being made in China you can't stop them. They are making fake drugs and fake everything else!

I can't understand why anyone would buy anything directly from China and off of eBay! There is a word for such a person "STUPID"!!!

[numismaniac-migration]

Banknote: I agree that it is PCGS & NGC's problem. But it is very definitely something that will become our problem when hypothetical scenarios like I outline here happen:

1)John Q. Novice- coin investor,new collector, decides to get into the hobby.He picks up a copy of Coin World at Barnes & Noble, and understands nothing in it except the price guide. No concept of market dynamics, eye appeal, etc.

2)John sees "Beautiful Rare Antique 1884 CC PCGS MS65 MORGAN DOLLAR" on Ebay.The coin itself looks JUST like all those beauties in CoinWorld, and is being sold by a new Ebay member Dengxiaoping, located in China. He sees the coin only has 2 minutes to go, and is nowhere near its price as indicated in his CoinWorld.

3)He decides to bid , and by a stroke of luck manages to win the coin for a cool $200 + $15 s&h.3 weeks later when the coin arrives, he's excited;Figuring he's earned bragging rights, he's going to show it to a local dealer,or shop it around, etc.The dealer informs him that the coin is fake. Not satisfied with this, he decides to show it to another dealer, who agrees with dealer A, that the coin is indeed a copy.

4)Now he's pissed;contacts the seller, who declines to accept returned items, so he 's over a barrel.He's out a few bucks and has a choice; A)He can eat the coin, and have a sour taste on the hobby as a whole, or he can B)Try to lay a sc*ew job on somebody else, who knows less than him.

 

I'm not trying to be patronizing, I simply want to illustrate the point clearly for people just now reading the post.

Were I in "John Q.'s" position,I like to think that I would be honest with myself, and admit I screwed up(eat the coin), but no-one ever really knows until they are actually faced with this situation.I also am of the opinion that "The more money involved, the more likely most people would be to choose letter choice B".

You're absolutely right in the sense that people buying this stuff are "stupid".Stupid people have a bad habit of trying to drag smart people down with them. The more smart people in your ranks, the less likely you are to be dragged down.

[numismaniac-migration]

Here are some E-bay coin listings, all located in China, all graded: look at 'em and judge for yourself. While they look pretty darn good, I'll bet most of you aren't willing to bid on 'em; I know I'm not.

7305408934,7305405820,7305401421,7305395340,7305331018,7305011784(This one's listed as PCGS in an NGC holder,by our Asian Expert Seller),7305010449,7304925441,7304924333,7304922566,7304922068.

 

If you have an E-bay account , add a few to your watch list, and see what they close at. In some of my own experiences, the closing bids almost seem as if the buyers are lowballing because they know they're fake.

[cpm9ball]

Maniac , what did Microsoft do when confronted with pirated copies from the orient? You might look into it.

 

Chris

[DonHeath]

Numismaniac,

 

I went and looked at the 82-O PCGS 64 you referenced in the post above, and entered the cert# into PCGS Cert Verification database. It is indeed listed as an 82-O PCGS 64. Are you sure the pictures aren't stolen from a legitimate listing? The seller is 0 feedback, is selling aboad, doesn't accept paypal, etc.

[numismaniac-migration]

Don : Glad you checked on these (I didn't) I did check out the ones from the seller referrred to in the previous posts. They all matched up too! In any event, I'm confident of any of these possible scenarios.

1)As you mentioned, the pics could be stolen from a legitimate listing. (Strong Fraud Case)

2)These are pictures of the actual item being sold(fake coin/fake holder copied from the genuine thing, [probably bought off ebay]) (Fraud,Violation of Trade Reg.,copyright fraud,forgery).

3)They are selling items which are being grossly misrepresented, e.g. advertising a slabbed coin, but selling a raw one,and failing to tell potential buyers this (Fraud, theft by deception)

 

Since you took the time to research this, (thank you), maybe you also noticed that all of these sellers have (0) feedback,located in China, and are new members within the last 90 days.Also, if you want to do this, I'm willing to bet that the items I listed before (closing in <19 hours), will show up again,being sold by different sellers(but exact same scenario [0feedback,china,etc]). Note the item#'s of the coins, someone's making these things like hotcakes, and they will be the same type of holders, serial#'s ,coin etc.It's either the same photos being used over and over, or a forgery of the same exact coin being sold over & over.

I'm also very willing to seriously bet that these things are fake. Let me know what you think, and again, thank you for checking that out.

3)

[numismaniac-migration]

Check out this auction, if you want a good laugh Ebay item#3961602566

[BankNote1]

EBay is full of garbage coins and currency. You don't have to go to china to get taken. There are plenty of good ole boys right here in the U.S. that will take you to the cleaners. About 1/2 of the currency sellers and 2/3 of the coin sellers are pushing overgraded cleaned up washed up [#@$%!!!]! I hope you can stop the stuff being sold from china but when are you going to start cleaning up the American eBay sellers??

[James_OldeTowne]

These appear to be genuine coins in genuine holders. However, the seller is an 0fb (no feedback) seller located in "China", so I suspect he's stealing images, say from Heritage or Teletrade, and posting bogus listings.

 

What we need are images of coins in fake slabs that are being purported as the real thing!

 

James

[numismaniac-migration]

If you look back to Leo's post, in the part where he mentioned "everyone buying and selling coins belonging to this organization", I think something along those lines could be done, at least on a voluntary basis.Kind of a hybrid organization(crossed betweeen the ANA and PNG). I disagree with organizations who charge huge membership fees.Dealers agree to operate under adherence to strict ethical standards, as far as representation of their items, and are willing to guarantee their items. The ANA (as mentioned by Leo) does already have this type of idea in place. The problem is that nobody pays any attention to it.Regarding the China Question, as time goes by, the quality of the counterfeits is only going to get better, so it will eventually come down to "kill the monster, or get eaten by it".I very definitely know what you mean about sellers here pushing garbage out into the market.It's deceitful,dishonest,unethical,etc.These are people who let greed get in the way of their better judgement.Regarding E-bay, I would like to see a popup add,or some type of disclaimer on ANY auction from China,which at the very least mentions China's export laws concerning antiquities.As far as our "domestic-dirty-dealers" go, a buyer-beware memo could and probably should be done.As you and I both know, honest dealers have absolutely nothing to fear from this. Whenever I've sold coins on there, I have given customers the best pictures, and most accurate descriptions of them.I represent grade as accurately as I can,and describe every problem,nuance,etc. about them.Where Ebay is concerned, I think there are enough reputable dealers on there to make a major difference.(Ebay could potentially lose millions if they chose to ignore this problem,provided I can get evryone on the bus) I would like to get some type of organization together, or at the least a clinic,to educate dealers and collectors. I would definitely need the expertise of people like the pro graders,experts in forgery and its techniques,etc.There are books out there that discuss this in pretty good detail,but they are no replacement for actual experience. My problem is that I don't know enough about all the different series' out there (grading-wise,counterfeit-wise).

Thanks For Your Reply,

The Ralph Nader of Coins

PS-I'll be putting some more stuff up on the site today. Take a look, and let me know what you think.

[numismaniac-migration]

Quick QUICK QUICK --------- IF YOU GO ON E-BAY RIGHT NOW, SEE IF YOU CAN DRAW COMPARISONS BETWEEN ITEM#7305395340, AND EBAY ITEM#7304922566 : : : : : : :************IT'S THE SAME DAMNED COIN BEING SOLD BY DIFFERENT SELLERS***********

[Leothelion]

It might be helpful if ebay had a policy that could place an auction on hold when a question has been raised about the item being sold. Ebay could implement a couple of rules like required certification and escrow for the auction to continue. A harmless means that would help put some legitimacy sp? with the item. If the buyer and seller agree then the auction goes on. If not and it's likely the seller would just end the auction. Further rules could include compensation for the grading and escrow services if the item is found to be actually genuine.

Because ebay runs thousands of auctions, there's no way they can read through every auction to check for it's authenticity. It's up to each and everyone of us to watch for and report fraud! But it's the money and profit that usually wins over honesty and integrety when fraud occurs. Everything from trumped up pop and price guides, shysters and fakes etc., we will always have scammers and those who unfortunately get ripped off! If I can prevent one collector from falling prey to a scam, I will continue sticking it in your ear, where and how ever I can!

 

Leo

[numismaniac-migration]

That's a wonderful idea Leo! !I actually put up a site that has text summarizing my position, and have posted it in discussion boards all over their site. I'm encouraging people to put up a link to it on their auctions, adn reply to me with suggestions they may have. I'll definitely be adding your ideas on to it (with your byline,of course ) ) The site link is under Part 2 of this forum

[numismaniac-migration]

I put up a new blog With Pictures !!! It's at http://coinfraud.seo-blog.org