bradleymxz Posted February 5, 2010 Report Share Posted February 5, 2010 Hello. This is my first post. I've been collecting coins for quite sometime and I came across an ad on craigslist. The guy was looking to buy wheat pennies. Fair enough. So we emailed back and forth....I told him I had about 320 wheat pennies, of random dates, mostly 1930s,40s,and 50s. He said hed give me 6 cents each, or about 20 bucks.....he doesnt have much cash but would trade for junk silver coins....and we agreed upon 7 pre 1965 quarters. So he sent me 3 barbers and 4 washingtons. I got them today and they just don't look right. If they are fake, they are DAMN good fakes. They ting like silver...they look like silver....i put a match against one and it reacted to the sulfur. I cut it open and it looks kinda shiny-aluminum like. The thing is...i scraped them aaginst a white piece of paper and they are leaving pretty dark-pencil like marks.... i will post a picture. I don't have a scale but will buy one soon. thanks for any help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobh Posted February 6, 2010 Report Share Posted February 6, 2010 Hello. This is my first post. I've been collecting coins for quite sometime and I came across an ad on craigslist. The guy was looking to buy wheat pennies. Fair enough. So we emailed back and forth....I told him I had about 320 wheat pennies, of random dates, mostly 1930s,40s,and 50s. He said hed give me 6 cents each, or about 20 bucks.....he doesnt have much cash but would trade for junk silver coins....and we agreed upon 7 pre 1965 quarters. So he sent me 3 barbers and 4 washingtons. I got them today and they just don't look right. If they are fake, they are DAMN good fakes. They ting like silver...they look like silver....i put a match against one and it reacted to the sulfur. I cut it open and it looks kinda shiny-aluminum like. The thing is...i scraped them aaginst a white piece of paper and they are leaving pretty dark-pencil like marks....i will post a picture. I don't have a scale but will buy one soon. thanks for any help The business end of pencils used to be made of lead ... these marks might indeed be lead marks. Lead used to be used in making fake coins quite a lot, especially gold -- up until people discovered how poisonous lead really is. Gold and lead have very close (similar) specific gravity. Lead was also used in some early (contemporary) Russian fake silver coins. There are lots of fake Morgan dollars and fakes of other 19th century/early 20th century silver coins coming out of China. The more modern Chinese fakes will probably have some kind of base metal (maybe lead?) but probably with silver plating. However, if it is lead, the coins will probably be too heavy unless they were careful enough to combine it with some alloy. Chinese fakes will probably look too good for junk silver, though. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccg Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Gold and lead have very close (similar) specific gravity. Did you mean silver and lead perhaps? I think lead's S.G. is actually slightly higher than silver (both around 10-11 ish), but gold and platinium group metals are in their own league. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccg Posted February 7, 2010 Report Share Posted February 7, 2010 Would you mind posting a pic of the coins themselves? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andPennies Posted February 23, 2010 Report Share Posted February 23, 2010 Hi. This is also my first post here - and had to respond to the Craigslist issue of 'coins'. About 3 months ago, there was a post on Craigslist S.F. Calif., for someone looking for fake coins to 'finish a web site about" type of ad... Being an avid 'goer-thorougher" of coins, I personally have noticed allot of fake looking 1995D & 1996D Washington quarters circulating around the area I live in - I mean ALLOT. It is just too unlikely that brand spanking MS coins of the same later dates would flood a small town so suddenly. (Yes, I have read Susan Headly's articles on the forgery of U.S. coins) So I contacted this person wanting the 'fake coins' for indexing and got a creepy feeling when the response came from a far away country. (No insinuations, or accusations, just 'felt' creepy), so I did not respond back to this person. I have saved quite a few of these examples. Why? I really don't know, other than they seem to be fine quality near MS quarters. (Even the weight is accurate - but the metal looks 'different'). Has anyone else seen a flood of these MS looking quarters from the mid 90's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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