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By Jack D. Young

I have written a number of articles in several different venues about a scourge of counterfeit Morgan Dollars in fake “PCGS” holders including here on Proxiblog.

The subject of this short article features a newly discovered example and a known bad eBay seller and his other wares…

First, the bad seller. His 2 listings at this writing on the Bay are known bad ones including the stolen PCGS certification numbers:

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Both were reported through their latest AI reporting process and removed.

His next one was previously sold last month and unfortunately, I missed it. The seller is now in a more prominent place on my bad seller list for periodic review.

And back a minute, the original source of these bad “coins” is actually in China (CN), and I continue to record new examples introduced to the marketplace in one of my Facebook Groups focused on counterfeits. And this one just hit my list this first week of September.

So, let’s review what makes this new one a counterfeit!

This one was sold as genuine, and someone got severely burned but apparently doesn’t know it:

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Holy crap Batman, $786.01 for a counterfeit Morgan in a fake PCGS slab!

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OK, we all say, “buy the coin, not the holder”; but I will start with the obvious, the holder. …

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I know Proxiblog’s Michael Bugeja may have a comment, especially about fonts, as he is a journalist (wrong font again here for PCGS); but there also are a couple of “easy” observations without this one in hand.

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There is no PCGS insignia in the lower right-hand corner, and the barcode is common gibberish for these: it will not read with my on-line scanner.

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Similar ones I have in-hand have the “PCGS” label stuck to the outside of the slab and won’t scan. And the notion it has a scannable chip shown on the reverse is false as well.

And what about the “coin”?

One place I always start is looking for the TPG cert number on-line for any descriptions and images!

And this example uses a genuine PCGS cert # with on-line genuine images:

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And comparing the genuine example to the counterfeit reverse shows some obvious differences.

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Images of the genuine certed example on the left, subject counterfeit on the right

The “S” is an obvious issue with this one; many of the current CN counterfeits use a common reverse which is one of the reasons I often start with the reverse on this type of counterfeit.

At first blush I can say I have not seen this specific reverse previously, but that will be another research project going forward.

For completeness I have also included an obverse comparison image of the genuine certed one to this one. The date font and surface scratches show as major differences between the two.

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Images of the genuine certed example are on the left, and the subject counterfeit on the right.

So, definitely not a match! And on to another reason I focus on the reverse. As I always state attribution is a major step in the review process and I regularly look up the known genuine reverses in VAMWorld.

For those not familiar with a “VAM,” I quote the following from my friends at APMEX:

A VAM Morgan dollar is a Morgan die variety. VAM Morgan dollars and VAM Peace dollars were first identified by numismatists Leroy Van Allen and A. George Mallis in The Comprehensive Catalog & Encyclopedia of Morgan and Peace Dollars. 

VAM is an acronym for both authors’ last names, Van Allen and Mallis, and was adopted after the book was published. 

So I looked up this date and mint-mark on their site:

Image from VAMWorld on-line site

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Sorting by the known reverses, there are 7 shown on their site and none a match to this subject example.

So, it seems the counterfeiters just continue to pump out fakes at a dizzying pace, including this one with the “fakes in fakes” using counterfeit PCGS slabs and stolen cert #’s. It does make one wonder what if anything PCGS is doing in response.

If you like posts like this, you can read more articles on counterfeit coins by Jack Riley, Jack D. Young and Michael Bugeja at this URL. Also, please subscribe so you can get our weekly newsletter and be informed whenever there is a new article or column.

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