Chinese Counterfeit Coins

By Ed McDonough

According to an article in the November issue of Coin World magazine, producing good quality counterfeit coins has become a very lucrative dream business in China, since it is not illegal to produce counterfeit coins and paper money there. Both Chinese and American coinage have been reproduced, many of them “slabbed” in what appear legitimate American coin grading company reproductions. Due to the finer quality of these operations, the average collector can be in a quandary unless they take special precautions.

A Chinese coin reproducer named Liu Ciyun is a large distributor on eBay and goes by the name “Jinghuashei.” If one goes to this site, one will see the reproduced items that are now labeled as “reproductions” since eBay has strict regulations regarding these types of products to alert potential buyers. The coins themselves are also stamped as reproductions, but how would all of these other exports be monitored, and what becomes of these items after passing hands? There are approximately 100 manufactures that produce about 100,000 fakes a month for Chinese-type coins alone.

ANACS, America’s oldest coin grading service, says that one way to tell the different is that these fakes are produced done with black gaskets in the slabs, and the slabs and do not properly fit the coin, while ANACS’s legitimately graded slabs are produced without black gaskets. The counterfeiter denies copying any PCGS slabs because they are “real trouble,” yet a 1916 Chinese silver coin has surfaced as a PCGS graded slab.

The collector’s only recourses are experience, knowledge, and when unsure, check with the local reputable coin dealer in the area. I have been a coin collector and dealer for more than 40 years and yet I still make mistakes and can be duped on occasion.

Coin World magazine is on the web at http://www.coinworld.com, but you must be a subscriber to access its articles online.

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Tags: ANACS, china, Coin World, Coins, counterfeits, eBay, reproductions

This entry was posted on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Articles, Blog Entry, Coins and Currency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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