1/4/22 Report - Signs of a Fake Coin. Gold Chain Find. Bigger Surf Coming.

 

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

Gold Cross and Chain.
Find and photo by Dan B.

I received the following email and the above photo from Dan B. Here is what he said.

I have been frequenting my local pawn shop to buy some simple silver coins for tooth fairy money for my children. In my travels, I came across a coin that appeared to be a 1934 Daniel Boone half dollar selling for 50$. I thought that was a lot and upon researching it I found the coin to easily value in the hundreds of dollars. I wasn't keen to fakes at the time but after some time passed, I considered getting it graded. Upon closer inspection there were a few red flags including a casting line parallel with the rim of the coin in one area. I took the coin to West Bay and upon testing it did prove to be a fake. Besides the funny line, there was a lack of general definition and a funny black patina. Steve spotted that before we tested it. It didn't even come up as the correct metal.

You would think that the easiest thing to do would just be to use real silver but I don't know much about making fakes.

Luckily, I have good report with my pawn guy, and he hesitantly allowed me to return it.
If it seems too good to be true...it probably is.

Thanks for the great posts.
I went jewelry hunting last Monday and found my first gold chain!

It is a rosary type necklace with a nice little cross (shown above.). I went specifically for small gold so I was very happy to know that I could find it. Going to take the cross off and see if it will still pick it up. It registered one bar off foil which was very low. Glad to have a good tester piece. Looking forward to targeting this type of thing in the future.
db

Thanks Dan.

Dan's email was timely.  He mentioned a few things I planned to talk about today.

Two Photos of Same Coin Shown Yesterday.

Above are two pictures of the same coin.  It is the same coin I showed at the top of yesterday's post.

The only difference between the two views is the lighting.  The picture on the left shows the color more accurately but does not show the detail as well.  You definitely can't tell much by the color shown by a photo.  By the way, that is the same background in both pictures even though it doesn't look like it.

Yesterday I asked you if you could tell if this coin is fake or real.  Although there might be times when you can identify a fake coin from a photo alone, you do not get all the information from a photo that you would get from actually handling a coin.

First off, if you were to pick up this coin, you might immediately be able to tell that it is not nearly heavy enough to be gold.  That was clear as soon as I picked it up.  But there is more.

Take a closer look.

Closeup Of Same Fake Coin.

This closer view shows that the coin is a mess.  Look at all that mess between the one and seven of the date.  How could that be made by a die strike?  The die would have to be falling apart.  And look at the area around the upper left corner of the shield.  How could that be made with a die?  And notice how fat and blurry the castle, lions and fleur-de-lis look.  

With coins made from a cast rather than struck with a die, the metal has to flow into a mold.  The metal will not fill all the small spaces and little corners completely.  There can be bubbles in the metal, and in the mold, and imperfections in the mold that will leave some extra metal, which might be filed off.

The edge on his coin is also shows a mold line, which is a giveaway.  Sometimes you can look at the edge of such a fake coin and not see the mold line, but you might see the marks left from the file when the mold seam was filed off.

A couple of the references that I gave you yesterday should help you learn to identify the signs of a fake, but in some cases, it will take a real expert.  Even the professional grading companies have been fooled.

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Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

I planned to get out to the beach today but didn't make it.  

Tomorrow the surf is supposed to be four to six feet.  And the tides are pretty big now.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

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This year I spent a lot of time on a different kind of site during the summer. I did some metal detecting on a lot along the FEC lines south of Fort Pierce and was surprised by the amount of railroad items tht had spent a few decades buried in the ground.  I had done some of that type of thing before, but did not find the concentration of items that was hiding beneath the surface of this lot, which included hundreds of spikes, bolts, barrel hoops, etc., etc., etc.  The items were intentionally buried, and it definitely appeared that there was a single unusual event, such as perhaps a derailing, which resulted in so many items be discarded.   Nothing valuable resulted from that investigation other than what was learned.