Why cast counterfeits?

[Zoins]

A lot of the Chinese Trade Dollar counterfeits seem to be cast copies.

 

Are there copies done with coin transfer dies? Would copies be made this way be worse than the cast ones? Would they be more expensive to produce?

[bsshog40]

We used to make molds out of clay. All you needed was one original.

[PerryHall]

Usually they cast the die using a real coin as a model.

[BillJones]

Casting a copy is much easier and cheaper than cutting two dies from scratch and striking the coins. It also provides a better chance is getting the details closer to the original because you are making the castings from an original coin. The trouble is casting loses sharpness, and the metal flow is different from a die struck coin.

 

The reason why government mints strike their coins 99.99% of the time is that it adds one more fact that makes the counterfeiter’s job tougher. It's also more efficient for mass production where mintages range from several thousand to billions of pieces.

[James_OldeTowne]

I am proabably wrong, but I think the Chinese coins actually are struck, not cast. I think that the dies are of poor quality, and they are struck on cheap, soft pot-metal blanks, and the combination of these two factors is why their detail is so miserable by comparison to genuine coins. Also, by striking soft metal planchets, the dies are not prone to breakage, considerably lessening the need to cut new dies, and reducing costs.

 

All that said, cast coins usually look even worse than these Chinese fakes, and if they were being cast, I'd think we should frequently see more incredibly bad examples, but within the limits of the technology used to make them, the "quality" of the Chinese fakes is fairly consistent.

 

By the way, I DO think the dies were impressed from genuine coins, and in effect, the dies are "casts". The resulting "pebbly" surface of the cast dies is then transferred to the struck fakes.

[TwoKopeiki]

Cast coins are the cheapest and easiest to make, but there are some new counterfeits coing out of China that are struck. Some use dental plaster for their dies, which detiriorates quickly, some use electrical die-transfer to etch metal dies, which destroys the host coin in the process... They are getting much better at this...

 

~Roman

[Houston Investor]

The Chinese learn quickly. They are improving their process and starting to make convincing looking Barbers.