A local man purchased 40 silver dollars from a street vendor near the airport outside the Atlanta Farmers’ Market. Forest Park police asked Atlanta Gold & Coin owner and coin expert the coin expert to evaluate whether the silver coins were counterfeit.
The group was represented as Morgan silver dollars, dated in the 1890s and marked as minted in Carson City, Nevada. After returning home, however, the man tested them with a magnet and suspected the coins were steel rather than silver. He had paid $240 for counterfeit pieces.
The coin expert evaluated the man’s suspected counterfeit dollars with specialized scales, calipers, and the experience he had gained working with gold and silver. He determined that the purported silver coins were replicas.
After the matter was resolved, the coin expert offered several ways to assess whether a silver coin was genuine. He cautioned buyers to be careful with neatly packaged Morgan silver dollars, because perfectly encapsulated coins could be a sign of counterfeits. Counterfeit silver dollars could also lack fine detail, look artificially aged, and likely adhere to a magnet; genuine silver coins would not. The coin expert suspected that these coins had been mass-produced in China.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” the coin expert said.
Police confiscated the counterfeit silver dollars.
