1916 Buffalo Nickel Die

[Paul]

Just to chime in here.....

Do you recall "Where" or "Who" you purchased these dies from?

I have had several more experienced collectors that have purchased coins on the web, send me their more common dates that were Nongenuine.
Of course these were "Non-Key Dates", but in an extremely high MS grade..... Which is why I think they do this...... as the collector value is there.

I always try to look for a COA when I buy items online, specifically a numbered COA that I can match up with something else I find online.

As has been mentioned, if you can think of it, their copying it........ somewhere

[silverbul]

give me a handful of no date buffalo nickels and a sledge hammer. i could have tons of fun. even see how it would look as an overstrike, die clash on a new jefferson nickel. for curiosity purposes only. i think you can mess around with it and not have any issues as long as you don't represent anything as a mint error. look what daniel carr does. jmo. do some research.

[HammeredCoins]

Yeah Paul, I got it from some one off antique dealer. I 100% knew I was taking a chance with it being fake so I certainly wasn’t shocked when that was the consensus.

I just didn’t think it would be worth it for anyone to go through the trouble to fake such a random coin, but alas you all have made it clear that the Chinese even fake these unremarkable dates/coins.

But yeah, I bet when you find a MS68 of this coin, one now has to really wonder. And if they use the correct planchette, no way NGC or PCGS can ID as fake

[Daniel]

All the common date fakes and counterfeits I find are purposely worn down or cleaned, high grade coins make it difficult to hide the imperfections so you rarely see them counterfeit for high grade reasons. It has happened but it draws too much attention when a bunch of look alike BU type coins are submitted or sold.

[Earle42]

Another thing to consider is that the fakers sell complete sets of fakes as well.

Years ago when Chinese company Big Tree was allowed to sell their copies on eBay, I contacted the seller and started to research. eBay found out Big Tree was advertising in their auctions coins that had "COPY" stamped on them, but behind the scenes Big Tree was sending fakes without the word copy. So eBay kicked them off. But that was only after the company had quite a following.

Big Tree had their own website (which I frequented keeping track of what was going on), and had a lot more inventory than the massive amount they showed on eBay. This included complete sets of any US coin you wanted as well as well as fake Dansco albums that held the sets.

Thus any date for any US coin was available. And after awhile Big Tree got into making fakes for just about any foreign coin also.

[HammeredCoins]

Very very interesting Earle! Awesome info. I actually found a picture a year or so of a stash of these fake dies that might have been them. Let me go try to find it.

[HammeredCoins]

Found it! Here is a link to the article and a few photos I swiped from it. And the overall shape and formation of the pictured fake dies are just like my Buffalo nickel examples.

https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/chinese ... ng-4071202

[HammeredCoins]

And to move away from fakes…..in 2003 a 1870 CC reverse die was found that was being used as a doorstop, no joke.

A large coin dealer/company whose name begins with an “L” (as we all collectively groan) bought it for $18,000.

A super cool piece of numismatic history!

[Earle42]

Yes, Big Tree was very open online about their company making "copies." In China it was not illegal, so they made copies and posted pics of the presses, people working, the machine for adding milling on the edges of their blanks etc.

At one time in the past the owner and I corresponded by email now and then. I thought I may as well learn all I could so I could detect the fakes.