WARNING: Gold coins e.g. sovereigns - eBay - remember Chinese & others copy ANYTHING

agarnett

I have been a long term watcher and buyer of coins on eBay. I follow trends daily. I was thinking of buying more gold and silver right now, but not from eBay without very very careful selection I think...

I have heaps of fakes in a rogues gallery which I have received from eBay sellers which I quarantine from the market. None of the sellers who sold those to me have gained, but I would still be the first to offer that I may have bought some fakes I haven't noticed yet.

I have however noticed unusual activity on the sale of gold coins right now on eBay. Sovereigns are being offered at too cheap a premium over the gold value this weekend with many giving invitations for "Best offer".

Check out Royal Mint's own prices - something not nice is going on. The official (fixed and manipulated) gold price rose again today by an unusual amount - same with silver. Silver is at a massive high compared to gold right now.

Selling of gold coins on eBay this weekend seems to me like organised activity. If you want a piece of unidentified yellow metal that masquerades as a UK gold sovereign, then fill your boots and ignore my warning.

If you buy one on eBay, you absolutely will not be able to tell if it is genuine without very expensive equipment.

Be careful out there.

Anything can be copied perfectly in 2016 for the fraction of what you think it costs to make perfect copies ... everything!

ballisticbrian

I was looking at gold bullion / ingots on eBay the other day and they were selling ridiculously cheap ( like the price of a novelty item) but there was nothing in the advert to say they were in fact, novelty. Could either catch someone inexperienced out - or worst case, just flood the market with fakes?

shaun_from_Africa

agarnett wrote: »

Anything can be copied perfectly in 2016 for the fraction of what you think it costs to make perfect copies ... everything!

That's not true of gold or silver bullion coins.
If a coin is the correct weight and size (diameter and thickness) then it can only be made of gold or silver.
Make it from an incorrect metal or alloy and if it's the correct weight then the size must be different to a genuine coin and if it's exactly the right size then the weight must be incorrect.
There is no way around that. If it's not the correct metal then it can't have both the correct dimensions and be the correct weight.

True, it is a problem when you come to counterfeit copies of rare coins where the rarity factor makes the coin far more expensive than the actual metal value as these fakes are generally made with the correct gold content.
However, this sort of fakery doesn't affect too many people as most buy the coins strictly for the gold value and not the rarity value.

ballisticbrian

Shaun, my logic would dictate you could take a wafer biscuit and put lead fishing weights in it, and make it the right weight for gold. It doesn't take that much intelligence to work that out.

forgotmyname

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

That's not true of gold or silver bullion coins.
If a coin is the correct weight and size (diameter and thickness) then it can only be made of gold or silver.
Make it from an incorrect metal or alloy and if it's the correct weight then the size must be different to a genuine coin and if it's exactly the right size then the weight must be incorrect.
There is no way around that. If it's not the correct metal then it can't have both the correct dimensions and be the correct weight.

True, it is a problem when you come to counterfeit copies of rare coins where the rarity factor makes the coin far more expensive than the actual metal value as these fakes are generally made with the correct gold content.
However, this sort of fakery doesn't affect too many people as most buy the coins strictly for the gold value and not the rarity value.

Why must the size be different? I could understand that if Gold and Silver were the 2 heaviest metals but they are not.

Tungsten is cheap and weighs almost as much as gold, a gnats whisker different. Want to be super accurate on the size/weight add something heavier like Rhenium?

Or Tungsten and Platinum, I know platinum is dearer but you only need a tiny amount to increase the weight of the tungsten.

shaun_from_Africa

Yes, tungsten is cheap but it is also extremely brittle meaning that making stamped counterfeits is very difficult and expensive.
Tungsten is occasionally to make fake gold bars where it is used as a core but rarely/if ever for standard bullion coins.

My saying that the weight and sizes of counterfeits won't match correctly isn't only my opinion.
Look on any website that is about fake gold bullion and many dealer websites and they will say exactly the same.
Here are just a few examples.

https://24carat.co.uk/frame.php?url=counterfeitcoins.html
http://goldbank.ie/goldbank-blog/172-how-to-spot-counterfeit-gold-coins.html
http://goldsovereignexpert.com/info/fake-gold-sovereigns-spotting-counterfeits/

This is a quote from one of the UK's largest bullion dealers:

We also see reports that tungsten can or is used to imitate gold coins or bars. We have never yet seen a tungsten fake, and consider it unlikely as tungsten must be quite difficult to work.

https://taxfreegold.co.uk/fakes.html

In just about all cases, a fake bullion coin will either be the incorrect weight or be an incorrect size.

shaun_from_Africa

ballisticbrian wrote: »

Shaun, my logic would dictate you could take a wafer biscuit and put lead fishing weights in it, and make it the right weight for gold. It doesn't take that much intelligence to work that out.

But I wasn't talking about gold bars but gold coins and when different metals or alloys of metals are used to make the fake bullion coins, either the weight or size will be incorrect.
It's a different matter if the coin in question has a rarity value well above the bullion value as these can and are faked using genuine Sovereigns for their gold.

If you go back and check my posts from a few years ago, you will find that I have made a lot of purchases of gold and silver bullion coins and I always used a small calibrated scale and a set of Fisch gauges.
Because the manufacturing tolerance for UK bullion coins is so tight (weight wise, all modern Sovereigns will be within 0.013g).
There were a couple of issues where the size varied slightly (they were a bit thicker) and for this reason, I always gave those two years coins a miss as I couldn't measure their thickness.

martindow

ballisticbrian wrote: »

Shaun, my logic would dictate you could take a wafer biscuit and put lead fishing weights in it, and make it the right weight for gold. It doesn't take that much intelligence to work that out.

Gold is far denser - 19.32 g/cm3 versus 11.36 for lead., so this wouldn't work.

Sorry to scupper your cunning scheme!

agarnett

Yes, if only life was so simple, shaun from Africa.

You are already talking about using strategies which very few buyers would know how to employ with any degree of accuracy. Good luck to you if you think you know what you are doing for your own personal benefit - my warning is obviously not for you.

But please do not dilute this warning inappropriately - a warning earnestly meant and with good reason intended for the massive majority who don't know what they are doing and probably never will unless they try to sell on a fake coin later, and get shown the error of their ways at that late (too late) stage.

Like you perhaps, I have bought hundreds if not thousands of coins on eBay, and I have uncovered too many crooks - some masquerading as honest and quite substantial dealers and making no apology when I question why they have sent me silver coins with magnetic cores for example - they "didn't know".

You must surely admit, if you know so much about it, that there is unusual selling activity this weekend on eBay, even with brazen selling of multiple copies of the same long dated gold coin as if hoarded for a special occasion like now! Possible, but perhaps not entirely credible for some new "pop up" seller.

The question is not whether the coin has to contain gold in order to weigh correctly (it doesn't - it could for example contain platinum which was once worth as much as gold and has higher density than gold but actually - and to possibly correct forgotmyname if he/she thought Pt was dearer than Au - Pt is trading at over 20% lower than gold). You surely appreciate there's no point buying expensive gold coins or bars unless you know exactly what you are buying? Remember that most gold coins bought singly come with a premium of at least 5% over the intrinsic value of the metal, and on eBay in particular, premiums of much more han 5% are prevalent. That's all a canny Chinaman needs to copy a coin using real metal - he just cashes in on the published "collectors'" premium which is published on NGCCOIN.COM and elsewhere. He can afford to make the fake coins from real metal and pay eBay fees and still make a profit from dumb purchasers. If he knows how to put in a Platinum core, he can make quite a bit more!

As for exact weights of sovereigns, how much should punters allow for wear and deliberate reduction? Many older sovereigns of course were in general circulation. Typically how much did those Victorian sovereigns lose in weight if they were in circulation?

It's an interesting subject, and one where solid education in the subject and experience can win through, but it takes years doesn't it, to realise all the pitfalls?

shaun_from_Africa

Good post ag..

To be honest, ebay has now reached the stage that I wouldn't advise anyone to buy precious metals, jewellery etc from buyers on there unless they can physically see and test the items before handing over any money.
Even though the mark up will be a bit higher, new investors should IMO, stick to registered bullion dealers who have their reputation, livelihood and possibly their freedom to lose if found to be selling fakes.

The biggest problem with using platinum to make counterfeit gold coins is the process actually involved.
Yes, platinum can be alloyed to give the correct weight but it then has to be made into a blank, stamped into a coin and then gold plated but as I've already mentioned, an alloy such as this is extremely hard and would be impossible to simply stamp a realistic looking coin from a blank.

As to having platinum cored coins.
Again, this can be done but as with the process above, it is far from easy to get right especially with smaller coins such as Sov's.
Having filled bars and ingots is far more of a problem especially if buying from unknown sources on ebay and other similar selling platforms.

It's impossible to quote a figure for the allowable wear and weight loss from old Sovereigns as there is such a variation in the quality of these coins and it wasn't uncommon for many of them to be pared slightly to remove very small amounts of gold.

forgotmyname

Ahh i thought Platinum was dearer than Gold, I didnt check the prices. So its even easier then, Platinum is heavier, Lead is cheap and soft.

Im sure there are labs out there producing very accurate fake gold.

I looked into some of the Silver ingots sold and is it German silver than contains no real silver? It was a while ago now, but i do remember there was loads of it for sale on ebay. Some very cheap and some slightly less than real silver ingots.