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1921 Morgan Dollar Real or Fake?
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17 posts in this topic

Because if you can make it for 50 cents and sell it for $20+ you can make some money.  Who's going to look at them closely?

Contemporary counterfeits are also a possibility because back then silver was cheap enough that the counterfeiters could make them out of good silver of the proper fineness and still make a decent profit just passing them at face value.  In 1921 silver was 65 cents an oz so a silver dollar had 50 cents worth of silver in it and would pass for $1.  If you had a press that could do 60 coins a minute that could be a $1,800 profit per hour. and in 1921 that would be a lot of money.

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According to NGC Coin Explorer, a genuine 1921 Morgan silver dollar weighs 26.73 grams. The three most likely scenarios (in no particular order) are: A) your scale is off B) the planchet was underweight C) the coin is a fake.

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On 8/26/2020 at 4:48 AM, Conder101 said:

Because if you can make it for 50 cents and sell it for $20+ you can make some money.  Who's going to look at them closely?

Contemporary counterfeits are also a possibility because back then silver was cheap enough that the counterfeiters could make them out of good silver of the proper fineness and still make a decent profit just passing them at face value.  In 1921 silver was 65 cents an oz so a silver dollar had 50 cents worth of silver in it and would pass for $1.  If you had a press that could do 60 coins a minute that could be a $1,800 profit per hour. and in 1921 that would be a lot of money.

But if I had the wherewithal to create a convincing looking fake Morgan dollar, why do a 1921? That makes no sense at all to me.

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25 minutes ago, GoldBear150 said:

$20.00 Lesson learned. This one caught me off guard because of the weight. Going to keep this coin in my fake coin album so i do not make a mistake like this again.

Take a real one and this one and drop on a table you will notice a distinct ring difference of the coin

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12 hours ago, GoldBear150 said:

I put two nickles on my scale.

It weights 9.9g.

Should weigh 10 grams.

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3 hours ago, RWB said:

Should weigh 10 grams.

Yeah not a big difference considering the base weight of his 21 morgan which is WAY under.

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21 hours ago, VKurtB said:

But if I had the wherewithal to create a convincing looking fake Morgan dollar, why do a 1921? That makes no sense at all to me.

Are we talking modern fake or contemporary counterfeit?

Contemporary, pretty much all dollars were worth a dollar so you made something recent that wasn't going to attract attention  Same reason the made the micro O fakes they were just going to spened them so any date would do.

Modern well as determined this was made light weight to either fool a non collector or to slip in with cull silver dollars.  If closely examined it probably isn't good enough to get past a knowledgeable collector so a rare date piece definitely wouldn't.  It all depends on the market you're trying to swindle.

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