1/2/22 Report - The Huge Problem of Fakes, Frauds, Counterfeits And Buying Collectibles.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

1998 Cent Showing Die Crack and Retained Cud.

It seems to me that we are now in an age of augmented illusion, fakes, frauds, and counterfeits.  Fraud is nothing new, but new technologies make it possible to create more realistic illusions and project those illusions to greater numbers of people.  That means wisdom and discernment is more important than ever before.

I was trying to think of a collecting area of interest that is not plagued by counterfeits.  There are certainly a lot of counterfeit coins.  Some people even collect counterfeit coins.  

Even sea glass is faked.  Some people tumble glass to create fake sea glass that they can sell.

Maybe fossils?  Are they faked too? 

 The answer is yes.  Some fake fossils are important.  Take Piltdown Man, for example.

A spectacularly popular fake of the early Twentieth Century was Piltdown Man, a fake “missing link” fossil made by Charles Dawson in Britain. He combined a human skull with the mandible from an orangutan and this was passed off as real for 40 years, until the advent of Carbon-14 dating exposed it as a fraud. Charles Dawson produced other fake fossils and must have been a strange character himself... 

(Soruce: Fakes, Fakes and more Fossil Fakes — Geological Society of the Oregon Country (GSOC))

So why are there so many fakes? One common answer is money. But there are other motivations.  Sometimes the motive is ego.  And some people just enjoy fooling others.  Attention and self-promotion is a common motive for fraud. And today, fraud is often committed for power and politics.  

Last night I found a bag full of Beanie Babies in my mother's closet.  I had just seen that some were worth a lot of money, so I decided to do a little research to see if there were any in the bag that might be worth a some money. One of the first looked like one being offered on eBay for $5000.  How lucky could you be?  Well, a little more research revealed that you couldn't go by by first appearances.  I quickly found out you had to look at the hang tag, and the tush tag, the eye-straining marks or combination of marks on the tags that indicated the edition or issue date or any of a variety of errors, or so-called errors, to identify Beanie Babies that might be interesting.  It was bad enough that the labels almost had to be read with a magnifying glass, but it took a Ph.D in Beanie Babies to figure out which might be more interesting or valuable.  

On top of all the complicated marks and factors that had to be deciphered, there are even fake "errors."  Some errors are produced, and high prices are asked for errors that are not significant.

Here is an example of a worthless error.   On some tags the word "surface" is spelled without the "r".   That is definitely a spelling error, but it is such a common error that it does not justify a premium.    There are plenty of sellers, though, that advertise the missing y error and evidently occasionally get paid for it.  It is easy to fool novices, and most people are novices in most things.  They simply aren't  expert enough to prevent being fooled by expert fraudsters.

Looking for "valuable" Beanie Babies, instead of being enjoyable, quickly became for me, frustrating and tedious.  It isn't that different from numismatics.

It would be very nice if you could look at a coin's date and mint mark and say that the coin is or is not a valuable coin, but it is necessary to look at a lot of other things.  

How many people can confidently grade or evaluate a coin?  Now that is often left to a professional grading service, but there are even fake graded coins. 

Like with the Beanie Babies, there are those in numismatic circles that will sell "errors," that according to many experts are worthless.  That is easy because of the nearly infinite number of possible errors and the difficulty of distinguishing valuable errors from insignificant errors.

It is fairly easy to identify die chips and die cracks, for example, but it is more difficult to determine which are valuable and which are not.  

A die crack will produce a raised irregular line running across a coin.  Sometimes it will be very small, maybe running from the corner of the Lincoln Memorial on a penny to the edge of the coin.  That is a very common die crack, and generally worthless (See example immediately below.).

Die Crack On Wheat Cent.

Many die cracks, because of how common they are, do not raise the value of a coin.  I guess you can say that such a die crack is a mint error, but it does not significantly increase the value of the penny.  Still, there are those who would take advantage of less informed buyers and make a profit off of such a so-called "error" coin.

At the top of this post is a more significant crack.  Besides the crack, it also shows a retained die cud.  That example is of much more interest than the one shown just above.

Here is a closer view of the die crack error shown at the top of this post.

Memorial Cent with Die Crack and Retained Cud.

You can find die chips on many wheat cents, and most will not affect the value of the coin.  There might be sone one who are interested in collecting all of the die chip examples, even though most experts might not consider them valuable.  And there are always people who can be fooled to pay more for a coin that most experts would declare worthless.

If you look at error and variety coin forums, a good percentage of the posts are from novices who think they have a double die variety when it is actually machine doubling.  I personally find it difficult to distinguish between double die examples and machine doubling.

It is not easy for a novice to distinguish between genuine "mint errors" from post-mint damage.  That is my opinion.  It can get frustrating.

There are many types of collectibles, and for each type there are a variety of factors that must be considered, and there are many who will take advantage of the novice, intermediate participant or even occasionally, the expert. 

Fortunately, there are forums where you can get a lot of help.  I got a lot of help on mint errors and varieties on the coin community web site. 

---

No increase in surf for a few days.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net.