Hi, thanks for your detailed and knowledgeable reply. It's more obvious to me now that you break it down. It still seems bizarre to me that someone would go through this laborious process to create something that could be done with an original low value coin but I guess most of these counterfeits are produced in China where time and labour are very cheap.
Interestingly, I came across some silver dollars at a market a few months ago and thought them probably too good to be true. I did quite a bit of research before I went back to look at them and obviously they were poor quality fakes. My point is I can understand people faking valuable coins but understand less so with low value coins.
I wonder if someone can clarify, with older original coins is there normally a lot of wear to the coin or are the details commonly so strong that the design is still well defined. What I mean is, if you see say a two hundred year old coin and it is very worn, is this a sure sign of a fake or can coins legitimately be in this condition?
Thanks.