By Jack D. Young, Early American Coppers (EAC), and the Dark Side Group ……
In a previous CoinWeek article, I reviewed the current glut of counterfeit 1881-CC “Morgans” in fake PCGS holders and the Chinese company selling them. The following is an image of one of the initial fakes I saw and a genuine example in comparison; PCGS “deactivated” the cert after this one was reported.
I note in the image a couple of pick-up points for the bad holders: the use of “Morgan” on the bad label (PCGS only used that designation on 1921-P Morgan Dollars to differentiate them from 1921 Peace Dollars), the lack of the PCGS logo in the front lower right corner, and a nonsense barcode that doesn’t scan.
Besides the holder, the coin is bad (as previously discussed), and the fraudsters continue to use different genuine PCGS cert numbers to keep their product “fresh”.
Now to the star of this Fun With Fakes episode, a “new” 1794 silver dollar from the same bad master source as the bad slabbed 1881-CCs and listed on eBay.
And here’s the seller’s description including cert number; the “Report this item” is highlighted because I reported it through the standard eBay process…
Actually, a pretty poor counterfeit when you compare it to a genuine example.
The date is bad as well as the profile and other details. My friend and fellow counterfeit sleuth Jack Riley found a similar Gallery Mint example, and these have been known to be copied without “COPY” on them by the counterfeiters.
So, the first “twist” of this story: the online PCGS cert for the number on the label of course has no image to help, but the denomination is noted:
A 1794 half dollar! Searching the web for the genuine coin turned this up:
So, can there be any other twists you may ask? Well, this is a Fun With Fakes article!
Going through my image archive and another past CoinWeek article (these seem to all be intertwined), I find this example:
Wow! Now this cert number and bad not-PCGS slab contains a counterfeit 1794 half dollar.
The past CoinWeek Fun With Fakes article on the family of 1794 half dollar counterfeits can be found here for reference. From that article, the “1794” half is based on 1795 O-119!
Fortunately, both ‘Bay listings were removed with no sale – but surely we will see them again.
As I have noted in past articles, the counterfeiters are obviously not numismatists, which certainly helps us. Should they ever hire the right individuals to oversee their “product”, however…
Thus another Fun With Fakes episode comes to its end. Again, this would not be possible without the support and advice of an army of friends and family.
Best as Always,
—Jack
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