Becareful newbie stackers

[Silverstackeruk]

This is just a little topic for the newbie stackers out there..

When i first started stacking the most common way i would test my silver purchases was by using a magnet but now it looks like the counterfeiters have got round that...

Also buy your coins from a reputable sellers and beware of eBay...

When something is too good to be true it usually is and if someone's selling below spot price you should be wary..

All the coin designs are being faked now so here's a few i spotted.

[forgottenmemorie]

I would assume there some quality issues that would make them obviously fake for newbies?

[Silverstackeruk]

Only if you have something to compare it with..When i first started i never checked the coins as they go straight into storage..They could be loads of fakes in my collection tbh..Then again most were bought from reputable sellers and there were less fakes around then.now ever coin is being faked

[kiskelo]

Has anybody tried a magnet on any of these? Does it slide off slowly or just fall off.

[swAgger]

It's worth mentioning that in pretty much all listings for fake coins on ebay, they illustrate generic images from the mints of the real things, or other photos of the real things. This is not to say what you will end up getting looks in any way identical to the real coin, or that they are so good that you can't tell.

Sometimes, like everything not just in matters of silver, new stackers starting off can be their own worst enemy on ebay and deserve a smack around the head rather than sympathy by being willing to buy from any far flung location just to chase a "bargain". An unwillingness to pay the going rates for your silver bullion is the root problem. And then they moan when some day they find out the "panda" they got for half price from where-ever-istan turns out to be fake. Silver is silver, newbies are more than aware it has a set value on any given day (expect to pay it!!), chasing something that is below that value and you aint getting silver. Stackers new to the game have no excuse from sticking with reputable dealers littered all over Europe and the US for mass produced bullion a small mark up over spot, when starting off. When you have been at it a while and have your knowledge of how the real thing should look and feel, the type of sellers you should avoid and the signals that something seems off in a listing, then you can use ebay confidently as a resource for stacking current or older bullion.

[SilverSniper]

On 4/22/2017 at 15:54, swAgger said:

It's worth mentioning that in pretty much all listings for fake coins on ebay, they illustrate generic images from the mints of the real things, or other photos of the real things. This is not to say what you will end up getting looks in any way identical to the real coin, or that they are so good that you can't tell.

Sometimes, like everything not just in matters of silver, new stackers starting off can be their own worst enemy on ebay and deserve a smack around the head rather than sympathy by being willing to buy from any far flung location just to chase a "bargain". An unwillingness to pay the going rates for your silver bullion is the root problem. And then they moan when some day they find out the "panda" they got for half price from where-ever-istan turns out to be fake. Silver is silver, newbies are more than aware it has a set value on any given day (expect to pay it!!), chasing something that is below that value and you aint getting silver. Stackers new to the game have no excuse from sticking with reputable dealers littered all over Europe and the US for mass produced bullion a small mark up over spot, when starting off. When you have been at it a while and have your knowledge of how the real thing should look and feel, the type of sellers you should avoid and the signals that something seems off in a listing, then you can use ebay confidently as a resource for stacking current or older bullion.

 

Lots of those reputable bullion dealers also have eBay shops, I am one of them.  

[Kevin]

Has anybody tried a magnet on any of these? Does it slide off slowly or just fall off.

I doubt they can make the coins non-magnetic but to have the same effect Silver has when you slide it on a magnet, and to also have 31,1g.
But there are many newbies out there and they don't know much about these fakes. We've been newbies too, and probably most of us around here purchased their first coin without even researching about Silver. This fake can be your first purchase: you don't know about the normal Silver weight, you don't know how the real silver feels vs the cheap, fake one etc.. many people will probably fall for it..

[silversky]

Hi Guys,

Those coins in the photo are actually pretty easy to spot as fakes if you know what you're doing.  I have 4 fakes that I picked up to use to check real coins against and to be sure that my methods for checking are reliable.  I recognise 3 of them as the ones in that picture above!!  I also have a 2016 kangaroo which is not bad actually and have given the real and the fake one to a couple of family members to see if they could identify the fake.  100% of them chose the fake as the real one!!!  Ouch!!!  That was without them knowing how to test though.  They do now.  Anyway, using 4 of 5 simple methods combined you can very simply determine 1 oz .999 silver coins as real or not.

1)  Use a loupe and not just your old mk1 eyeball.  Under a loupe you can often see issues with the detail that just don't look fine enough due to plating.  What looks good to the naked eye shows as variable under the loupe and gives away a non minted fake.  Also, I have noticed that sometimes around the field where the rim is you will see a faint hint of a pink/gold colour which is where the plating is not quite as thick in that 90deg angle and the base metal (usually brass or copper) is just hinting through.  Perhaps they are roughly plated and then reminted and it just scratches a fine ring off exposing the base metal slightly.  Not sure but under the loupe it's noticeable on some of them.

2) Use a set of digital callipers.  Very important.  Cheap and very accurate these days.  Measure it up in diameter and thickness and compare to the mints official specs.  It should be very close.  Fakes tend to be larger but theoretically they could be smaller if based on a very dense base metal.

3) Weigh it with an accurate set of digital scales.  Again, pretty cheap these days to get some that come with a calibrating weight and very reasonable accuracy.  Mine are to 2 decimal places and are surprisingly consistent and accurate.  The weight should be pretty accurate because mint's don't dish out extra metal for free and their quoted figures are accurate for their bullion coins.

4) Use a powerful rare earth magnetic slide.  These can be bought online for around $40 or be made pretty easily at home.  They are much better than just sliding a round magnet down a coin face because of the variables in how you hold the coin etc.  Use flat sheet rare earth magnets of N42 or higher, easily available on the net and line up 6 or 7 on a plank of wood in a row and glue them on.  Next stick a couple of thin wooden borders at the sides to stop a coin from falling sideways out of the slide.  Attach a leg to it so that the slide is at about 70 degrees vertical.  Anything ferrous sticks like glue and anything non diamagnetic slides down at almost freefall.  Silver, gold and pure copper slide down very obviously slowly. Looks like magic!   They do slide at very slightly different speeds but it's hard to see that on a short slide.  This makes the test poor for determining a plated pure copper fake.

5) Measure the SG if you are not happy with any of these tests.  That is done by first weighing the coin dry and then tying a very fine thread around it and weighing the weight of distilled water(get from any motor factors) it displaces when dipped in.  Do that by putting a cup of water on the scales and clearing them to zero then suspending the coin from the thread into the water without touching the sides or the bottom.  Take the two numbers and divide one by the other and you get the Specific Gravity.  Silver is 10.49 and anything close is good enough.  Although you have a tiny thread around the coin this has only a very slight effect on the overall reading.  There is nothing close to silver density wise and so this reading is very difficult to fake.

The fakers have to compromise in order to get something to look real and so they are forced to choose which one of these things they want to get correct.  They cannot get them all correct or it would be pure silver and so the combination method is the answer to easily spotting a fake.

The coins displayed in the above photo that I tested failed miserably on all of these tests apart from number 3. 

Firstly, to different degrees they had a faint yellow hue (seen under the loupe) around the edge of the field at the rim and generally poor detail under the loupe compared to the original.  To the naked eye they look good however so beware.  Secondly, they were all too big on the callipers although the weight was actually not too bad.  Clearly they had compromised to get the weight nearly correct which made them all too large.  All of them failed the slide test and roared down at speed although one of them was clearly ferrous based and snapped onto the slide hard!  Beware however!!!  As explained above, it is possible to pass the slide test if pure copper or another type of similarly diamagnetic material was used and then plated.  However, the density and size would then be wrong.  I have some 1oz pure copper rounds which travel down the slide at almost the same speed as pure silver making this an unreliable test on it's own against a plated copper fake.  Steps 2 and 3 however eliminate potential copper fakes as to make a copper round that weighs the right weight makes it way too big!  All failed the SG test but again, it's theoretically possible to make a multi combo platter that would add up to the correct SG and size and weight albeit highly difficult and expensive for a small 1 oz coin.  Even if one is ever made it would then fail the slide test so it's all about using the combination of these tests.

Using these 5 methods combined you can identify pretty much any fake .999 silver bullion coin easily.

Cheers