We can't even buy junk silver without the Chinese causing problems.
I have collected gold & silver coins (vintage) for years. After viewing a number of YouTube videos on the subject, I've directed all my energies & resources to collecting & accumulating 'junk silver': pre-1965 Roosevelt dimes & Washington quarters. They are all 90% silver.
While the folding money in my pocket is worth less every day, the dime alone that was worth 10 cents in 1964 is now worth $1.42 on the eBay market. The quarter that was worth 25 cents in 1964 is now worth $3.25. Silver is never going to suffer from inflation like paper currency. It is instantly recognizable & can be used as a handy currency should there be a recession, depression or complete economic collapse. And the dime & quarter are not worth the effort for the Chinese to counterfeit them.
It's certainly not just China running scams and flimflams....
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Unfortunately, it seems if you have enough money and power, you can get away with it over and over.
Russia's also a veritable utopia for forgeries and counterfeits. Fascist-leaning nations with barely regulated economies tend to be crapsacks, for some reason.
Russia's also a veritable utopia for forgeries and counterfeits. Fascist-leaning nations with barely regulated economies tend to be crapsacks, for some reason.
China has actual mini mints rolling out fake coins by the tens of thousands.
Inside a Chinese Coin Counterfeiting Ring
A typical cop in Russia makes less than $10,000/year. This makes corruption a necessity for survival.
I suspect it is the same in most "crapsack" nations.
Watch the video. Common silver quarters are indeed counterfeited in China. You should invest in a $15 nitric acid / scratch block silver test kit.
It's certainly not just China running scams and flimflams....
$25 million settlement finalized in Trump University lawsuit
Trump Must Face Suit Over Alleged Multilevel Marketing Fraud
Students for Trump Founder Faces Prison After Confessing to $46,000 Scam While Posing As Attorney With a Degree From an Elite Law School
Unfortunately, it seems if you have enough money and power, you can get away with it over and over.
I watched that video & with my background in chemistry I would not waant that nitric acid stuff in my house. As an alternative I just bought the following:
1. A digital scale good to 0.01 gram up to 300 gram. I can check weight of both single coins & entire rolls.
2. A diameter/width gauge. Ingenious flat plastic piece with slots to accomplish both functions.
3. Copy of the 2020 Whitman Red Book for coin specs (weight/diameter, etc)
4. 60X magnifier with LED stage light.
And, of course, my $6 neodymium magnet for detecting magnetic coins.
The who kit is under $40. And I threw in a roll of 3M painter's tape to mark rolls as to their origin in case I do find a clinker.
I may collect the fakes in a zip lock baggie with an included label FAKES in case anyone questions my intentions regarding them.
China's got a surprising amount of industry devoted solely towards counterfeiting. My personal experience in the matter is from buying a used miniature for a tabletop wargame that was clearly passed off as the real deal. It was a severely underweight tank, and if you picked it up and smelled of it, the resin smelled rank, even through a few coats of paint. I do a bit of digging, and sure enough, there's like a dozen recasters operating out of China & a couple out of Russia, and that's just for a single niche tabletop game. Don't even get me started on their blatant movie ripoffs in animation.
Yeah, when it comes to the people enforcing the law, they're going to get their fair pay out of the citizenship one way or another. The taxation method is obviously superior to the extortion method.
Most Morgan silver dollars sold are fakes.
Buying at a coin shop is no safeguard. A fella around here built his savings buying gold coins from a coin shop in Tampa. Did this for many, many years. Half a million in gold coins. When he retired to cash them in, he learned 100% of them were fake, totally worthless. The coin shop claimed it didn't know they were fake and filed bankruptcy. He couldn't prove otherwise and a court judgment would be worthless.
Nearly every coin they had sold for nearly 3 decades was fake. He'll have to work to the day he dies as a result.
I watched that video & with my background in chemistry I would not waant that nitric acid stuff in my house. As an alternative I just bought the following:
1. A digital scale good to 0.01 gram up to 300 gram. I can check weight of both single coins & entire rolls.
2. A diameter/width gauge. Ingenious flat plastic piece with slots to accomplish both functions.
3. Copy of the 2020 Whitman Red Book for coin specs (weight/diameter, etc)
4. 60X magnifier with LED stage light.
And, of course, my $6 neodymium magnet for detecting magnetic coins.
The who kit is under $40. And I threw in a roll of 3M painter's tape to mark rolls as to their origin in case I do find a clinker.
I may collect the fakes in a zip lock baggie with an included label FAKES in case anyone questions my intentions regarding them.
If there is money to be made by copying it, someone in China will make a copy of it.
I was in Beijing back in 2012 or 2013 and there was a mall that focused on nearly everything
For handbags, they would have different tiers of copies.
A low tier that looks like the original, but made of cheap materials with a different logo. It smelt like cheap plastic and rubber (Walmart Shoe department)
A tier above that using better materials and zippers
A tier above that where it was pretty much like the original but with a different logo on it
A top tier that they kept hidden from view (police raids). I was shown a Hermes Birkin bag that was extremely well made. Birkin bags sell for thousands of dollars depending on the leather used and the original price quoted to see the copy was about $200. I expect the only difference between a real one and the fake one would have been in the leather which was still very good.
Of course since the Chinese people know that stuff in China is often faked, and if real taxed at a high rate they buy things overseas. There are "personal shoppers" in Canada buying goods in Canada, (skin care, luxury items like handbags etc) when on sale in Canada and they ship thousands of dollars worth back to China for resale. Small shipping companies have opened up just to handle this business. They might only make an extra couple thousand a month doing it but for some stores and brands it is adding up to a significant portion of retail sales in Canada. For some skin care lines (upper level ones popular in China) sales to personal shoppers can exceed 60% of the business (in certain stores)