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I saw a fake coin at my coin club meeting on Friday!

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There's a guy (let's call him Roy) who is always seeking out "bargains" and only invests in scarce Seated coins. He also constantly pesters me for grading opinions - though he never buys from me.... Anyhow, he showed me an 1860-O Seated dime that looked pretty decent at first glance - VF to EF detail. However, I noticed something weird about it - the obverse was corroded, while the reverse was nice. While this is possible, it was the first hint that something was amiss. Having had him remove the coin from the holder, it was then that I noticed something weird about the edge of the coin. It's hard to describe, but basicallly, the reeding of the coin was weird, and it looked like the coin had a seam all the way around it right up against the obverse.

 

To make a long story short, I opined that the coin was actually a common 1869 P obverse that had been planed down to a thin shell, and mated to a common O-mint reverse whose obverse had been shaved off.

 

The strangest part of the whole story is that Roy picked this up from one of the most-revered dealers in Seated coins - a frequent advertiser in Coin World.

 

The moral of the story is, if you don't know what you're doing, and it's to the point that you're constantly having to ask others for advice, and you only want to buy rare-date coins, you'd better buy only certified!

 

James

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this man got exactly what he paid for

 

There is no Santa Clause in numismatics (yep, even in December)! Most all advertisers in the numismatic publications make money by bulk sales (but, of course, there may be exceptions). Buy cheap and sell high regardless if they are problem coins or not. If they were to deal only in superb, problem-free coins then their inventory would be practically nil. That is why you will loose your hiney if you don't know what you're doing.

 

I find it incredible at some of the testimonials that wholesalers place in full page adds in Coin World. They spout about how much more this dealer paid for his coins than the other. Well, if the buyer is a wholesaler, in order to make a profit then he has to really underbid the coin in order to turn the coin over and to sell it at wholesale vs retail.

 

So, hypothetically, if a coin retails for $1000 and wholesales at $700 then how much do you think that the wholesaler will pay for x ? $300? $400? or even $500?...

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