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Fake Graded Coins?


HGr

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I received a Libertad yesterday from ebay. The coin is in a slab and says Ms70, but the coin itself has marks on the edges and face easily visible with the naked eye - the highest relief part of the bust looks a bit rubbed and there's a scratch under the M. Its basically a (nice) bullion coin, not worth bothering grading imo. 

How has this happened do you think, I don't think it would be poor grading,  could the original coin have been removed and sent for regrading? Or could the slab itself be a counterfeit? The serial on the back matches the coin, year etc when you look it up on line. The coin itself appears genuine. 

The seller is accepting a return no questions asked which makes me slightly suspicious. 

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I wouldn’t buy anything graded by ANACs. Not sure their slabs are as difficult to fake as NGC/PCGS. Is their a hollow gram or barcode to scan etc? If not I wouldn’t touch it.

Decus et tutamen (an ornament and a safeguard)

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5OjxoCIsDbMgx7MM_l4CmA

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I’ve had a very good NGC slab in the past! Seller stated no returns, I said I wasn’t happy etc and he changed his mind. Lucky it wasn’t gold. I’d return it if you’re not happy

Decus et tutamen (an ornament and a safeguard)

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5OjxoCIsDbMgx7MM_l4CmA

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Ebay is full of fakes, i am positive some of the sellers believe the coins they are selling are ok, others know they are selling fakes.  I have a gold/silver tester.  

I have not bought from ebay for a few years now.   

Sh-tbook will not let me join there crappy community, I have mailed them to ask why they have banned me,  but they will not answer so they can f-ck off.  Though i been told traders find competitors  info and make fake ID's of the competitor to have them banned for ever, so watch out if you are a trader on shi-ebook.  

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"Or could the slab itself be a counterfeit?"   Probably, which if thats the case, the coin could be fake as well... Until you learn how to vet a seller and their product before you buy I would advise you to stick with reputable dealers and not ebay... Your question is something an experienced stacker would have asked himself as soon as they clicked on the ad.

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7 hours ago, STONE said:

"Or could the slab itself be a counterfeit?"   Probably, which if thats the case, the coin could be fake as well... Until you learn how to vet a seller and their product before you buy I would advise you to stick with reputable dealers and not ebay... Your question is something an experienced stacker would have asked himself as soon as they clicked on the ad.

Where do you think the slabs are actually made?  Do you honestly think that they pay American prices for factory space, American salaries for American or American based workers to make these slabs, even the hologram labels are not made in America, they just print the last details on the label, the information about the coin - the coin's details and grade.  It's all made overseas, generally in China, then shipped to America to be finished - the labels getting the finishing touches printed on them.  You can even buy them yourself direct from the original manufacturer - Empty NGC Slabs, and they are dirt cheap between US$0.35 to US$0.45 each, though you have to buy them in bulk buy the 1000.  You can also buy the labels, both NGC and PCGS complete with the holograms and bar codes - everything excepth the coin details and grade, yourself from the original manufacturers from the same online store.  If it makes you feel any better you can also buy fake cashew nuts - they're made from peanuts that have been pressed into cashew nut molds and besides the fact that they don't taste like cashew nuts nor cost nearly as much as cashew nuts to the naked eye they are extremely convincing.

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"Where do you think the slabs are actually made?"  Well, the fake slabs are probably made at the same place the fake coins are made... That was quite the tangent though and 99.9% of what you rambled on about had actually 0% relationship to anything I said. Put the bong down...🤣

The scammers will usually post a pic of a real slab and coin, not the fake stuff they will mail you. Thats the hook.

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36 minutes ago, STONE said:

"Where do you think the slabs are actually made?"  Well, the fake slabs are probably made at the same place the fake coins are made... That was quite the tangent though.🤣

The scammers will usually post a pic of a real slab and coin, not the fake stuff they will mail you. Thats the hook.

I won't post a link to this one, but there is a company that will not only sell you empty NGC or PCGS slabs but will also supply you with either NGC or PCGS labels filled in that will pass both NGC and PCGS database searches.  All you need is to make sure that the coin you want to give whatever grade you want it to have already exists in either the NCG or PCGS database and this company basically steal/clones somebody elses coin details off of NGC or PCGS's database, and print all that information including the barcode onto the not filled in label that they supply NGC and PCGS with, so technically the slab is real - after all it is made by the company that makes them for NCG and PCGS, so is the label real - again it's printed by the company that prints them for NCG and PCGS, it's just the coin that is fake as it's not the actual coin that either of the grading companies have actually graded, but the coin can still be real in the ense that it's a real Morgan dollar, a real ASE from a certain year, a real Maple from a certain year.....except that none of these real coin have been seen yet alone graded by either NCG or PCGS, it's you who is paying this company that decides what grade to give them.  That's the trouble with having Chinese companies as part of your supply chain, they won't just supply you - the company/person, who designs the product that you are paying them to manufactur for you on your behalf, they will happily and openly supply it to anybody who is willing to pay for it, though generally for more than what they charge the person/company that designed the product.  Don't forget that intellectual copy right laws and copy right laws in general are very very different in China than they are in the west, they're almost non existant - I've seen shops in China that sell pirated Blu Rays display official government certificates saying that they are licenced to sell pirated movies, that's one of Donald Trump's, quite a few former American presidents, and a lot of American companies - includding Apple, issues and problems with China, and one of the reasons behind Donald Trumps current trade war with China.

 

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How can you trust any slabbed coin if this is the case, unless you sent it for grading yourself? 

I'm surprised the grading companies would allow these companies to continue to supply them. It undermines their whole point of existence! 

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I've only been stacking/collecting for 7 months or so and these sorts of issues put me off ever wanting to buy graded or sealed coins. 
With capsules and flips I can always take the coins out, weight them and measure them etc.
This is just me and maybe 10 years down the line my views may change. :)

 

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21 hours ago, HGr said:

How can you trust any slabbed coin if this is the case, unless you sent it for grading yourself?

Firstly by buying them from reliable and reputable sources/dealers. In my opinion - remember opinions are like bum holes, everybody has one, and everybody thinks everyone else's stink, eBay is not a reputable sources/dealer in my opinion, to me a reputable sources/dealer is somebody with a storefront/physical address, not a rened PO Box, nor a fancy address that is nothing more than a mail forwarding company, but somewhere that you can actually turn up in person to look at what you are thinking of purchasing, turn up at to buy what you want in person, and more importantly show turn up unannounced should things not be right wih your purchase and hold a person be it the owner or just an employee responsible for sorting out the issue.  That doesn't mean that there aren't any online bullion dealers that are not reputable sources/dealers, I've bought gold and silver online, but only from places that have a physical storefront that I can turn up at unannounced to kick up hell should there be issues, instead of having to deal with the hassle of being giving the run arround via email messages and what not.

21 hours ago, HGr said:

I'm surprised the grading companies would allow these companies to continue to supply them. It undermines their whole point of existence! 

It's not like they have any choices unless they are willing to increase the fees they charge for grading peoples coins by a hell of a lot, and I don't mean by 50% but a few hundred %, American factory space is not cheap, American workers are not cheap to employ, American utility bills are very expensive - it's not unusual for Americans to buy bottled watered to shower with, flush their toilets with because it's cheaper than buying water from a water company, electricity theft in America is very high because it's that expensive.  It's far far cheaper for them to have their slabs and labels made overseas then shipped to America, it keeps their costs down, and their profit margins up.  This is nothing unique to the coin grading companies, Apple do it, Google do it, Microsoft do it, there are more companies who outsource the manufacturing of their products to China than there are companies who do their own in house manufacurung, in fact if you look at what it takes to get the 'Made In XXXXXX'' country label on a product it would shock you, in some places like Switzerland, to get ''Made in Switzerland'' stamped on your product all you need to do is have that product calibrated in Switzerland like in the case with Uwatec, these computers are actually made in Indonesia but calibrated in Switzerland yet have ''Made in Switzerland'' stamped on them, some countries only require that the final 5% of the manufacturing is done in them for them to certify the product as being made in that country, some only require the final assembly of a bunch of parts made in several different countries be done in them before they will certify the final product as being made in that country.  It is truly shocking what countries will allow to companies to do, or better put not do, to get the ''Made in XXXX' country stamp on their product.

 

17 hours ago, dom555 said:

I've only been stacking/collecting for 7 months or so and these sorts of issues put me off ever wanting to buy graded or sealed coins. 
With capsules and flips I can always take the coins out, weight them and measure them etc.
This is just me and maybe 10 years down the line my views may change. :)

 

I'm the same as you here, I won't touch graded coins from any company for many reasons, when I first stared stacking I was buying 1 ounce bars of gold, when I was introduced to the idea of buying gold coins, the person who introduced me to them strongly advised me against buying graded coins from any grading company - there are quie a few of them, there are even U.K. based grading companies, due to several reasons, fakes being just being one of them, their ''grade guarantee'' being another - as in we grade this coin as MS69 however should it develop any milk spots, reddening while in our sealed slabs the grades we gave your coins no longer applies so you will have to send them back to us to be regraded at your expense of course, plus graded coins may go out of fashion - as in NGC graded coins may no longer be the flavour of the month but PCGS graded coins are, or PCGS graded coins may no longer be the flavour of the month but one of the other coin grading companies becomes the flavour of the month, or the whole graded coins system may got out of fashion.  I was also told to plan for the worst, but hope for he best as in work on the basis that your coins or bars will never get you more than a little under spot value, don't bank on them getting you a premium just because they are graded or become saught after/collectable, in fact you can actually buy graded coins for not much more than ungraded coins - I've seen the recent Marvel Venom coin slabbed and gradded as MS69 for sale from reputable bullion dealers - dealers who have shopfronts, for I think it was £7.00 more than ungraded versions of the very same coin, granted it's a fairly recently released coin, released earlier this year if memory serves me correctly so it's not like the coin commands much of a premium to begin with.

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