Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Source: Surfguru.com. |
The increased wind and surf is the big news for me today.
The wind is really whipping, as it seems to do every year after I put up my Christmas decorations, and it looks like we're going to have some nice big surf. The tides are still nice and high, and today the wind is northwest with a northeast surf.
An eight- or nine-foot surf is promising. Last time we had something like that during the November/December period, there were some good finds.
I'll be watching that and try to get out to some of the beaches soon.
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Robert Gurney, in his book, Counterfeit Portrait Eight-Reales, provides useful descriptions of the types of counterfeit's addressed in his book. The definitions are more generally useful.
Here are the basic types and basic descriptions.
Class I counterfeits are contemporary silver counterfeits. Contemporary means the counterfeits were used while the coins they were meant to copy were still being used. Class I counterfeits circulated with the money of the time and place and were below .800 fine silver, which means they had less than the required silver content and were worth less than the authentic circulating coins, In other details, they would look good enough to circulate along with the authentic money of the time.
Class II counterfeits were had silver near or exceeding the correct amount. The silver content would be over .880 fine. These were made from about 1840 to 1930. They were essentially unauthorized imitations which circulated alongside their contemporary counterparts. In some cases, other governments might manufactured these to cause inflation or supplement low quantities of coinage needed by the population. There are some interesting stories about these.
Class III counterfeits, in this scheme are numismatic forgeries. Because of advances in production capabilities, these primarily were made after 1930. Instead of being made to circulate, these were made to defraud collectors. That is like the copies of old and collectible coins made by China and sold on eBay to defraud collectors.
Class IV counterfeits include coins all others, including but not limited to altered coins and replicas.
Gurney studied pictures of coins on eBay over a five year period. There were 4,541 eight-reales studied. 11 percent of the coins were counterfeit, including all four classes. 282 were Class I counterfeits. Less than one percent one percent were contemporary circulating counterfeits. That is an impressive and extensive study. The author presents a number of other studies and statistics.
It is interesting to note that te vast majority are unique examples. Of 574 coins, he found that 74.4% were unique. You might expect that tons of the same forgeries are being made and flooding the market, but it appears that you don't run into a lot of the same examples. That means you can't just look out for a few varieties, because there are so many varieties, and you aren't likely to run into the same ones.
Like I've said before, this is an good but technical book with lots of clues on detecting counterfeits.
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I wanted to fill up my tank and saw a sign on a gas station advertising gas at a cheap price, so I stopped. When I started to fill up my tank, I noticed that the prices per gallon that was ringing up was actually higher than the price on the sign. I stopped and told tbe clerk. She gave me changed to make up for the advertised price. Maybe I'm wrong, but I bet that very few people would not notice that they weren't getting the advertised price, or maybe they wouldn't care. But I could have easily not paid enough attention to notice the discrepancy. So maybe watch to see if you might be paying more than the advertised price. Seemed like an easy trick for the gas station to make some additional money. I just don't think many people would pay attention.
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DOJ IG reveals 26 FBI informants were present on Jan. 6.DOJ IG reveals 26 FBI informants were present on Jan. 6 | Fox News
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Good hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.ne