There are many good counterfeit gold coins out there. This one is listed in United States Gold Counterfeit Detection Guide by Bill Fivaz, as example 1 of the 1853 dollars. It is real gold but the color is "off" a little. You might not be able to see all the diagnostics with these pictures but everyone of them are there. I would recommend this book to anyone purchasing gold coins. It just paid for itself today
The pictures are not that good, It looked like a nice coin but nothing to get to excited about. If it was real I still would not have gotten it slabbed.
So did you sell it for around the price in gold? The coin actually looks pretty nice, I'm no expert on Gold Dollars, but the one thing that made me weary at first were the rims and the ribbons of the wreath.
I never bought this coin. It was offered to me and I showed the guy that it was a fake. I offered him gold value for it but he didn't want to sell it that low, so I took a couple of quick pictures, put it in a 2x2, labled it "Fake coin, real gold", and told him to have a good day.
Gold dollars always made me nervous. I think counterfeiters have faked this more than any other gold denomination, at least before the sigma fakes and the Chinese operations today. I don't know why, but back in the day almost all fake gold you saw was dollars. Great point about the book, and thanks for the heads up to gold collectors. I keep trying to convince others how books will pay for themselves. Sometimes I preach to the choir, other times to people who will never listen it seems.
How did you determine there was gold content? Just by weight or did you do a scratch/chemical test too?
The weight was almost exact on and I tested it with an eclectic gold tester. Something else to note: A lot of these pieces were made for cufflinks and jewelry. They were made with real gold and a very hard to tell without the diagnostics. This particular piece came from a bezel. You could see the contact marks on the edge but somebody did a decent job of filing down the rims so you could not tell unless you were looking for it. The dealer I work with has 3 more of these fake dollars that he is selling for the gold weight. They are VERY Common!
"How serious is the problem? I attended my first coin show in 1960. Since then, I have been at several hundred coin conventions of various sizes - and I have seen counterfeit gold coins at every show I have attended. Since 1989, I have been a professional authenticator/grader for ANACS. I have spent roughly 3,500 days in the ANACS grading room, and on the vast majority of these days I have examined quantities of counterfeit and altered United States gold coins.” Randy Campbell, NLG ANACS Authenticator/Grader Dublin, Ohio
I can't see every detail from the coin from that picture, but notice the "distached" berries on the wreath. These "floating berries" also appear on $3 gold pieces. The color is off and loss of detail I'd assume. Still a very good counterfeit.
