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Counterfeit Coin Detection: A Morgan Dollar “Super-Fake” Revealed

1884-S_morgan_obv

Counterfeit 1884-S Morgan Dollar

 

Counterfeit Coin Review by Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) ……
Lest you think spotting fakes is easy, take a look at this 1884-S Morgan Dollar.

Each month in this column, we discuss some of the fundamentals of counterfeit detection, using counterfeit coins as illustrations. To date, the examples shown have not been deceptive. By that, we mean that they would never fool a professional coin dealer or a specialist collector. Before we give the impression that counterfeit detection is a simple matter, we need to introduce the super-fake.

1884-S_morgan_revIt should be stated at the outset that “super-fake” is not standard numismatic vernacular. In fact, we may have introduced the word just now for the first time. It is borrowed from the term super-note (or super-dollar), widely used to describe very deceptive counterfeit US currency. By super-fake, we mean a coin that is a deceptive counterfeit that could potentially fool professionals and advanced collectors.

There are a great number of counterfeit coins that fall into this category. Their weight and level of design detail closely match authentic examples. Instead, specific die characteristics are used to identify them as counterfeits. A die characteristic is a tooling mark or depression on a coin that is shared commonly by all fake coins struck from that particular die. A number of documented counterfeits share specific flaws, called “repeating depressions,” that are used by authenticators to identify them as fakes.

Shown here is a deceptive counterfeit 1884-S dollar. Other than the obvious fact that it is a gem uncirculated example of an impossible key issue in higher grades, there may not be much to suggest that this coin is fake. To many, the overall look of the coin will be good. Weighing the coin also tells us that its weight is within standard tolerance for the issue (~26.7g). Few professional numismatists and even fewer collectors have seen such a high-grade 1884-S Morgan Dollar to compare it to, and most will not know how to conclusively authenticate a coin that passes the basic tests.

Fortunately, in this instance, the cheek of Liberty displays a tooling mark that identifies this coin as a fake.

The long slender line on Liberty’s cheek is not present on genuine examples of this issue. In fact, some specialists will recognize that this exact die gouge appears on genuine 1884-CC Morgan dollars, obviously the coin that served as the model for this counterfeit’s obverse. The mark, shown here in magnification, is a blemish on the dies that was struck onto the coin. Its size and position suggest that this characteristic mark will be visible on lightly worn examples or in cases where this counterfeit coin is falsely abraded to appear bagmarked. File this characteristic away in your memory bank for when you look at an 1884-S dollar and you might save yourself a lot of pain caused by purchasing a fake.

1884-S_morgan_detail

Die characteristics also reveal the true complexity of coin authentication. Here we’ve talked about one characteristic that appears on one fake 1884-S dollar. But there are thousands upon thousands of different counterfeit coins. NGC has an extensive library of characteristic marks on fake coins that we use for reference, and senior graders have thousands of them committed to memory. Truly, the only way to develop that kind of mental resource is to look at hundreds of coins every day for decades. Even still, new super-fakes with their own sets of characteristics, like this 1884-S dollar, are being made today.

Interested in reading more articles on Counterfeit Detection? Click here.

 

Numismatic Guaranty Company
Numismatic Guaranty Companyhttps://www.ngccoin.com/
NGC was founded in 1987 and has become one of the largest third-party grading services. Their parent company is the Certified Collectibles Group (CCG).

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15 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve been collecting for about 2 years now my first coins that I bought were fake there 16 silver dollars that got me started in collecting I know have 46 silver dollars

  2. I just bought a Morgan Silver Dollar. I was a skeptic about the price so I only bought one to see if it was legit. After about six weeks it showed up and it looked fine so I bought 27 more for a price of 199.00. I noticed on my PayPal that the offering company was from China. But am thinking there are coin collectors in china and maybe someone is liquidating an estate. Six weeks later the coins showed up. Still was a little uneasy about them so I put one on the scale. It only weighed 22.8 grams so I’m sure I got screwed. This company advertising on my FaceBook account. The coins look great by the way. They are scuffed up and dirty but they are not very worn. Not sure what to do with them at this point.

    • It sounds to us like you put yourself in a very bad situation. The company likely will not accept the return and as they are counterfeit, the best advice we can give you is to contact the U.S. Secret Service and arrange to turn the counterfeit coins over to them and provide them any information you might have so that they can investigate it. A cursory review of the current prices of Morgan dollars would have revealed that this offer was too good to be true. Learn from your mistake.

      • The same thing happen to me. These are very good fakes that any average coin collector could ever recognize as fake. What do you do with these coins to keep them out of system. These really devalue the whole system of coin collecting.

    • BOUGHT FROM THE SAME COMPANY…ONLY 5 COINS THO FOR $27….STILL HAD THEM LOOKED AT AND YES FAKE AS A 3 DOLLAR BILL REALLY NICE LOOKING THO

    • I had the same thing happen to me. Facebook ad. I bought 48. Once I realized they were fake I contacted PayPal, It took a bunch of back and forth but I got my $ back

  3. I have a 1902s Morgan dollar that’s super shiny like it’s been polished looks totally different than other Morgan’s how to tell if it’s fake

  4. They’re gone as far as infringement of copyright NGC encapsulation of morgan’s using MS70 grading instead of PR70. Knowledge is power. Weigh them,, use a magnet. The more we stop dealers from selling chinese garbage the better it will be for us all. Pay Pal & Amazon must take the first step in making sure these are legidimat businesses have have a valid Email Acct.

  5. I purchased from the same Facebook company from China. But I knew they were fakes. I purchased them because I just can’t afford some of these so I thought I’d purchase the next best thing. Very cheap and very good replicas. It seems the complaints got so bad that now before you purchase them they make sure that you know that they are fake. Even on the payment page. Still pretty good replicas.

  6. May have leapt before I looked. On Ebay there is a seller, [redacted], that I felt was legit since it had 36,000 feedback 100% positive. I now noticed after buying a few thousand dollars worth that there seems to be an abundance of dmpl morgan dollars. The most recent I finally questioned myself on was the 1878s dmpl. After looking into their account deeper I found that the same coin, exact photo, has recently been sold 8 times. The dozens of coins i have received so far of all different dates all weigh properly, but am still concerned that some could be fakes. Since you can’t speak with anyone at Ebay, what would you do in this circumstance?

    • You may want to first check with the certification services whose holders the seller is purporting to sell (assuming coins are certified). If the coins are not certified, you really put yourself behind the eight ball. Ask yourself, why would a professional seller not maximize the liquidity of their coins by having them professionally graded and encapsulated? As far as eBay is concerned, your best bet is to contact the Anti-Counterfeiting Educational Foundation. You can do so by following this link: https://acefonline.org/

  7. The 188_? CC were so inexpensive my curriosity got the best of me. I had no idea they would be shipped from China, the receipt on the ebay site that shipping time would be lengthy. By the time they arrived in the mail I had forgot about them. I had some Morgans evaluated for other purposes when I was told that the two coins were Chinese fake! First I heard of it. I called my credit card company and they reversed the charge.

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