TomD Posted November 14, 2008 Report Share Posted November 14, 2008 The Chinese Panda series is a very popular series but its' popularity has been waning over the past few years due to the vast number of high quality fakes flooding out of China. Below is a fake and a real coin. There are differences and you can tell with practice, there are multiples of signs. One indication that has remained consistent is that they are fakes, not counterfeits and therefore are not silver. All fakes, being made of silver plated copper, weigh 27 grams plus/minus 1 gram compared to 31.1 grams (+/- a tenth or two) for the real ones. I once came across some fake gold 1/10th oz Pandas with the correct diameter and weight. I was lucky to have noticed but they were 1.9 mm thick compared to the real 1.0 mm. The 1/10th gold coins are so small that the thickness difference was hard to pick out. I have a collection of the real coins and have also been collecting known fakes. Oh yeah, the fake is on the right, there was no design in the "carpet runner" until 2002. Apparently the fakers wanted one die to fit as many years as possible. There are other indications as well but they are more subtle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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