There are several ways to check.
1. Magnet, a good one,
2. Weight, if they are too light for the size and off spec...its a fake!
3. Shallow details. Too much ware and simulation, most of these are nickel copper alloy. But when toned can look like silver, the same alloy is used to make jewelry called ALPACA looks silver...but its not.
4. The tell tale way to tell a counterfeit, check the reeded edge, if it does not look quite right, Its not, this is the only way to tell some $2.5dollar and $5 gold piece fakes. If you check a pile of them side by side and they are a bit off of eachother...fakes. The dies and collars are different on quite a few of them.
A few years back when these fakes where hitting the market from China i was buying up as many as I could, Call it abuse of the system but It was the right thing to do, I got a bunch, paid for them via paypal, then when I got the fakes, Notified Ebay and paypal and got a %100 refund on my money for the goods. I figured it was ok to screw over a counterfeiter and scam artist, Kept the dog from getting money for the things. May have helped slow it down.
either way, I processed them as is my policy with fakes and there was not a bit of silver in them, all copper nickel alloy, SO BE CAREFUL! Not even the silver value.
Below is a picture of some of the Gold coins I recently destroyed, I did not think to take any pics of the fake trade dollars but these gold coins look and are gold and are perfect said for a few things. The Chop Marks are my doing to show the owner that yes they were destroyed, they were then processed in Aqua Regia and dissolved forever, and are now in wedding rings
things to know.
1. The reeding was off, not the same type of cut as a US coin.
2. They were a bit too clean and shiny, hard to tell, and you had to have them next to a regular issue coin to see the difference, But they were dies that were just a little too polished.
Other than that, it was a direct transfer die that was AMAZING! with out 15x magnification, you could not tell. A grading company can tell however, So watch out on lose gold US $5 and $2.5 coins. But the good news is the size, alloy and weight are perfect and dead on.
The only reason I can think for doing this is money laundering at a profit, as you can always pull a premium on older coins, the thing is, none of them I have found so far are of rare issue, they are all common date as to not bring much attention.
In any case, if you ever come across a counterfeit coin, yes it sucks, but do the responsible thing and destroy it or have it destroyed, you can wright it off on your taxes if you pay them. The last thing you should do is pass it off on someone else, because that liability can come back to haunt you.
