Thursday, November 19, 2009

Fake - 2010 Chinese Lunar Tiger

Barely a month after the launch of the 2010 Chinese Lunar Tiger coins, the counterfeits has surfaced! Ebay seller xuemei828 has listed these counterfeit coins. While she has the slightest ethics in declaring that these are gold and silver plated coins, there would be many others who would pass it off as the genuine coins simply because there is no way to know by visually looking the the coins. It would be until it is being weighed that we would know. Alternatively, old-time coin collectors are aware that the newer issues of Chinese coins are no longer double-sealed, hence, photographs of double-sealed coins would likely to be deemed as counterfeits.

Another way would be to look and feel the Certificate of Authenticity (COA). The counterfeit COA is printed by high quality printers and hence, makes the genuine COA colour look pale and feint. In the 25-Coin Panda set, counterfeit COA does not have watermark. However, this counterfeit COA HAS watermark. The difference that can be felt is as the counterfeit feels flat while imprints could be seen and felt on the genuine COA. However, over time and after the coin and COA has crossed many hands, we may not be able to use this method to authenticate. This makes me wonder on the impact on slabbing the coins because while it seems safe to buy slabbed coins, the slabs could also be counterfeited together with the coins. Where does Chinese coin collection go from here?

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