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The E-Sylum: Volume 20, Number 4, January 22, 2017, Article 17

COUNTERFEIT 1872-S LIBERTY SEATED HALF

John Frost writes:

The Liberty Seated Collectors Club has confirmed a new and dangerous counterfeit 1872-S Seated half dollar, two of which had been certified by major grading services. We issued a "Be on the Lookout" supplement to the monthly E-Gobrecht publication, with the announcement and the key pick-up points for this counterfeit.

We brought an example (the discovery piece) to the recent FUN show and showed it to the 4 major grading services, auction houses, and many dealers on the bourse floor.

The write-up by myself, Bill Bugert, and Dick Osburn, can be found at the LSCC website

Thanks. Here are the details - be careful out there! This is a "really good" fake. -Editor

Counterfeit 1872S-obverse Counterfeit 1872S-reverse
Counterfeit 1872-S Liberty Seated Half

At the recently concluded Houston Money Show, we confirmed the existence of a new and extremely deceptive 1872-S Seated half dollar. Although we will describe the discovery and the subsequent investigation in the March 2017 issue of the Gobrecht Journal, we did not want to wait until then to publicize this new counterfeit. There are now five of these known and more will surely appear in the meantime.

They are good enough that two of them have already fooled the major grading services. Four of the counterfeits sold on Ebay in August 2015, October 2015, March 2016, and August 2016. The fifth appeared at auction this past summer, and may have been the second or third example from Ebay (but that isn’t known).

Although there are numerous die markers that we used in the investigation, the key pick-up points to detect this counterfeit are the following (and seen in the photos below).

  • High and very small S mintmark (this size/style mintmark does not appear until later, in 1875)
  • Die gouge next to the first T in TRUST.

Counterfeit 1872-S Half diagnostics

Note: both of these pick-up points are perfectly legitimate on some 1875-S coins, but not on 1872-S.

The counterfeit will be presented as part of the LSCC meeting at FUN next week (Friday at 9:00 a.m.), and it will be available for examination at both the meeting as well as the LSCC-BCCS club table (#740) on the bourse floor.

Be on the lookout for this new counterfeit! If any of you see additional examples, the LSCC would be interested in hearing about them. If you can provide the timeframe in which you see them, and the source (e.g., Ebay, auction, local dealer, show, etc.), that would be very helpful. Please notify us at the LSCC email address, lscc@lsccweb.org. Thank you!

And look for the full details in the March Gobrecht Journal.

To read the complete article, see:
Be on the Lookout! New dangerous counterfeit 1872-S Liberty Seated Half (www.lsccweb.org/144-Supplement-Jan2017-BOLO-1872S-counterfeit.pdf)

Fred Weinberg ad02


Wayne Homren, Editor

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To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com

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