Susan Headley wrote a 3-part series of articles for Coin World in December on Chinese counterfeit coins. She has followed those up with an article in the February 2, 2009 issue of Coin World titled 'Chinese fakes deceive some FUN dealers'. In the article she describes how she several Chinese counterfeit coins to FUN in Florida earlier this month and offered to sell them to various dealers. (For the record, she said she would not have completed any sale of these fakes. She was simply trying to gauge the dealers' ability to identify these fakes. The Chinese counterfeits were purchased on eBay from sellers in China and Hong Kong.)

Her results are disturbing. Headley states:

 

The counterfeits were grouped according to quality and purchase price (from the counterfeiters):

1. cheap and poorly made, costing 50 cents to $2 per coin

2. inexpensive and moderately deceptive, $2.25 to $5 per coin

3. moderately priced and fairly deceptive, $10 to $50 per coin

4. extremely deceptive, $50 to $250 per coin

The more deceptive coins are struck on planchets of the correct composition and weight. (Struck counterfeits are generally higher quality than cast counterfeits.) The dies used to strike these coins are much higher quality than earlier dies and produce very convincing coins.

The most deceptive coin of the bunch was a 1900 Lafayette Dollar. This coin was in the 4th group of counterfeits listed above. Most dealers, if they correctly identified this coin as fake, closely examined it for quite a while before rejecting it. Many, unable to point to a specific defect, simply said it did not "look right". Dealer Matt Kleinsteuber instantly proclaimed the Lafayette "counterfeit" because it did not have the strike characteristics of a genuine example. (This is interesting because I have fooled Matt with a couple of my better counterfeits.)

Headley mentioned one collector who bought a 1796 Draped Bust Dollar in a PCGS slab for $9,000 only to find out the slab (and the coin) were counterfeit. Several problems with the slab identify it as a fake.

She also discusses fake 19th Century error coins (e.g., broadstruck coppers and double-struck Shield Nickels) coming out of China.

I highly recommend that every collector read Headley's series of articles. If you don't subscribe to Coin World you should go to your local coin shop and buy the Feb. 2 issue if for no other reason than to read this article.

If the Chinese counterfeits are getting good enough to fool half of the dealers approached at FUN they are getting good enough to fool most collectors. Should these articles scare you as a collector? No. They should make you more aware and should prompt you to educate yourself so you can identify counterfeit coins.