Chinese Counterfeiters

Chinese counterfeiters producing high quality fake coins. Now not only are the counterfeiters minting Chinese products but American products including numismatic coins. Experts everywhere are being fooled more and more. The new counterfeits are starting to weigh spot on! By using a mix of metals they can get the weight almost exact to the real thing! From Portland to Chicago, fake gold and silver coins is big business. A precious metals bull market and improved counterfeiting methods are now costing inverstors a great deal of money. Buyer beware! http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-fake-silver-and-gold-flood-global-markets-100-000-coins-from-a-single-counterfeiter-.aspx?article=3696746522G10020&redirect=false&contributor=Mac+Slavo Work with multiple dealers who have been in business for several years. Like any investment strategy, diversifying your eggs into multiple baskets will protect you if one of them happens to fall. In this case, buying different products from multiple dealers, all with solid reputations, will prevent you from losing your entire investment in the event one of the dealers was duped by counterfeiters. While not exactly ideal, it's better to lose just a portion of your investment than all of it. Trust but verify. Buy from one dealer and get your investment appraised by another. If you've invested $5000.00 into precious metals, paying an additional $100 to have another dealer (most will take a look for free) verify the quality of the assets you purchased is not a bad idea. If you were sold a fake, you can then take immediate action against the offending dealer (as opposed to waiting five years only to find out you're holding a worthless metal). Understand dimensions and weight. One of the best ways to determine if your asset is legitimate is to know what dimensions it should have (circumference, thickness, weight). Every government issued coin, and even privately issued rounds or bars, should have manufacturer dimensions available either online or by simply giving them a call (otherwise go with a different product). Get a digital scale and a caliper and take measurements. Even though fakes can come close to the real thing, the density of gold and silver are unique, so if a particular bar or coin shows an inaccurate weight or dimension, you're likely looking at a fake. It may cost you a couple hundred dollars to acquire the appropriate tools, but if you're investing multiple thousands of dollars into these investment then we'd consider the cost of doing business. Take the time to learn about your investments (it won't take long) and you can save headache and heartache down the road. Gold and Silver Acid Tests. Gold and silver have unique properties when mixed with certain chemicals. While not exactly ideal, because you'll have to 'damage' a tiny portion of a particular bar or coin, an acid test can be one of the best tests to perform in order to ensure you have a legitimate precious metals product. You don't necessarily have to go through and test every single one of your one ounce silver eagles, but testing a few coins out of each batch wouldn't hurt. Try pre-1965 silver products. They call it junk silver. Chris Duane of Don't Tread On Me refers to it as Constitutional Silver. Half dollars, quarters and dimes minted prior to 1965 contain 90% silver and are worth well more than their face value. While Chinese counterfeiters may be producing silver eagles, bars and other mints in mass quantities, they will likely shy away from US coin products for a couple of reasons: 1) why mint a fake quarter when you can mint a fake silver eagles worth significantly more? 2) minting fake US coins is a Federal crime, and while the Chinese may not be worried to much about being investigated by Secret Service, pressure from the US may force China to act against counterfeiting, something the Chinese knock-off artists would like to avoid. Pre-1965 silver coins, in our opinion, are the only option for those making purchases on auction sites.