Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

This lady stops at one of our scrap gold spots today and offers a flawless looking CML. 1oz.

Looked great, felt right. Not magnetic. Weighed 31.2g / 20.05dwt, but that is such a small difference that I wrote it off to the scale.

I offered $800 and she accepted. I explained that I would need to acid test first. She says fine.

At first I couldn't get the coin to leave a sample, even on a smooth stone (bad sign). I finally changed angles, bore down hard, and got a good sample.

22k acid took a few seconds, but completely ate the sample. I was shocked. Tried again with the same results.

I am no coin expert but acid doesn't lie... she swore it was real but I passed.

Is there something about these coins I don't know? It was a 2005 - no real numi value. So why fake it to that level of perfection?

Anyone else have experience with fake CMLs?

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Does it matter that you used a 22k solution on 99.99 24k gold? I don't really know about the acid method, but the weight is exactly 1 troy oz and diameter is 30mm and the thickness is 2.8mm...it can't be fake if the size and weight are correct, there is no material that will substitute exactly.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Never seen a fake 1oz. You should have put a silver test on the sample first for lead/yellow. Your acid kit is only 22k and not suitable to 24k.

It was probably real. If the size and weight is exact you wont even need to test.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

I have never heard of a gold Canadian Maple Leaf being faked but I guess there is a first time for everything. I guess the only way to know for sure if it was fake was to have it melted down.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

I didn't have anything here to measure with, need to get some stuff...

No, 22k acid will cause zero reaction on 24k gold. (They don't make a 24k acid either)

If you drop 10k on a sample from a 14k ring, nothing will happen. If you drop 14k on another part of that sample, nothing will happen (unless it is seriously underkarated). Drop any higher grade (18k or 22k) and it will melt the sample.
So judging by that test, whatever that was was not even 22k gold - and very possibly not even 18k.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Also, I frequently use 22k acid to test 22k US coins, 24k, and and .900.

Discoloration indicates .900 (if there is no reaction to 18k acid).

No reaction means it is at least 22k.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

If the coin measures out, then the what color did the acid turn? Red, blue or green would have indicated copper, cream for gold but silver will give a reaction. Are you getting your test acids from I. Shor in New York? they have the best supplies and their test kits are what I recommend to other dealers.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

The ones everyone around here use just have three outcomes:

Nothing happens,
Sample melts,
Sample discolors

So instead of using pure and judging by a color reaction, we use premixed solutions that simplify the process.

The silver acid I have is the only one that will change the color of the sample in reaction (unless you count discoloration as changing the color)

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

What about ebay username 808davo He buys very cheap from China you could say fakes but all that matters is that the coins are 100% 999 fine silver. As long as its fine silver I dont care where or how it was made. If you buy the same coin from an offical mint you par2 or 3x the price. Silver is silver, and I just think of the melt value.

What do you think?

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Can someone please kill this spamming troll. he's a some other threads too. He hawing about EBay. Kill him dead mods.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

The point is that this was not 24K gold. It wasn't even 22K. Hell, I doubt it was even 18K.

I'd be way too afraid to buy something counterfeit for gold value, unless I had it assayed or at the very least, filed it in half and acid tested the very middle.

You never know how many layers of plating a counterfeit may have.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Gold-plated tungsten?
Gold-plated depleted uranium?

There are very few metals of sufficient density to make a counterfeit gold coin of correct weight and size. The acid does not lie. You sound like you do this for a living and so have the benefit of experience with chemical and physical properties of gold. Your post is very intriguing, and worrisome to purchasers of gold.

And why would someone accept only $800 for 1 oz. of pure gold in the form of a government issue bullion coin? This is a very large discount, no?

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

95% of what we buy is 10 or 14K jewelry, and we rarely see coins like that, so I have not invested in equipment such as Fisch testers or even a micrometer... it may be a good idea though.

We buy scrap gold all day every day at 35-50% spot, so I can turn scrap into bullion for next to nothing. I wasn't interested in the coin as an investment, I was just buying it to possibly make $100 or so. Gold hovered barely above $900, and technically by law, I have to hold that coin 30 days... I don't like getting such a small return on a large investment (comparatively).


I suspect that if I'd done the measurements, though, the coin would've passed that test. The woman seemed genuinely shocked and upset - and I base that on countless times where people have brought plated jewelry that they obviously KNEW was plated, and how they acted after informed of the fact. :)

She stated that this was the last of 5 she'd had, and that every one of the other ones had sold without a problem. She wasn't familiar with the acid test, so I'm guessing that the other buyers just measured and weighed... the other 4 wouldn't have been bought if one of those things had been off.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

IONO... if it passed the weight & measurement tests, I'd probably have taken a stab at it for a steep discount to spot. Never really heard of fake maples before, although there's always a first.

If someone could point me to an article about maples (or any other 1toz gold coin) being faked with anything near the correct dimensions & weights, I'd like to be educated.

Like mamboni mentioned, it's very interesting indeed.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

If I could've filed it in half and tested the dead center, I think that would have been interesting... :)

Otherwise I wouldn't pay $20 for it

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

They are fake ML 'replica' selling on ebay, but they obviously don't have the proper specifications, and even the design looks odd for someone used to look at the genuine article.

So it's possible that it was a 'replica' (conveniently without the mark, as ebay sellers often 'forget' to write it).

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Check your acid.

Get a good scale and some good calipers.

Or a fisch if you can find one.

Acid testing a maple that has the correct weight seems a bit much, but not as much as offering $800. :O

I honestly don't know what to make of this story. Very odd, but nothing surprises me anymore.

Was the fake coin as soft as a maple? You should have taken a bite out of it! :D

I have heard of the occasional fake Maple, but they supposedly don't have the correct dimensions. Never seen one in person. (But fake double eagles? They're everywhere!)

Also, be careful with those funky electronic gold testing gizmos. I've known them to err on higher karat gold.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

The link you provided points out plainly that this coin is gold plate over copper. Also, by the collar of queen elizabeth, it says "copy".

I guess the coin is worth spot copper.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Acid is fine... I used that same bottle recently to check a number of high karat items with no problem.

We have a pretty good scale - not one of the $500 lab scales, but it is good quality.

Acid testing a coin that has the correct weight and dimensions is overkill, yeah, but in this case I didn't have anything to accurately measure the dimensions (like I said, we buy almost all scrap, and don't usually see coins like this).

I was look at the Fisch website last night, it looks like they are selling again (I had heard they were just getting rid of existing inventory then stopping production). I may check into that. At the very least I could get some nice digital calipers, that would be a big help.


I wouldn't trust those electronic testers on a $10 sale. :111:


What really bothered me about this though, is that I believe the woman's claim that she had sold 4 of these already and no one had had a problem with them. At least some of those buyers would've checked dimensions. Weight on that coin was good - dimension I'm willing to bet was correct as well.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

I would love to see the coin in question but I would be willing to bet a ton that either the coin was off dimensionally or by weight. I would be a very costly undertaking to tool up to fake a .999 gold coin in all its' properties. Once you had the tooling in place you would have to recoup the investment by making a bunch of them. In other words there would be a flood of them and we would have heard of them.

If you had a copper maple, make it a mm thicker and a few mm larger in diameter and the weight would be very close. Anyone who had seen a lot of maples would probably notice something amiss but gold maples are smallish coins to start with.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Tungsten would be the only practical metal you could use to fake
a gold coin with close to the correct size and weight.

The only other densities would include Platinum (more expensive),
and Plutonium, Uranium.... I would not put anything past the Chinese
but this is highly unlikely... even for them.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

If this woman had been Chinese, the plot would've thickened.

In reality she was (no other way to describe this) a hippie.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

On a minor note --- considering that gold was trading at ~912.00/oz yesterday, is $800 a fair price?

I'm new to the field, so please, correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Plutonium? Not a chance in hell. Wonder what critical mass is in maples?

There's also iridium and osmium but God knows what they cost and the machining difficulties.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

For scrap (not bullion), I usually start at 35% spot and go up if necessary. 65% is about as high as I'm willing to go on scrap, and that will beat every other dealer here, unless someone has several ounces. Anything higher than that isn't worth the time.

(see the now 8 page thread - "How I buy PMs at 35% spot every day" for a spirited discussion about this :111:)

Anyway, I was buying the coin to resell it, not as an investment. So $800 actually leaves me a pretty thin margin, especially with the 30 day holding law here, and with the fact that gold was on a downturn....

Shelling out $800 to maybe make $150 at best is a very undesirable scenario for any business. It's why I don't like coins. I can very often pay $100 for scrap and make the same profit.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Right - to make a convincing fake gold coin, at minimum the desnity and appearance of the metal must simulate gold. Of the few metals that are denser than gold, many are impractical by virtue of cost. Others are very difficult to fashion (i.e. tungsten). If memory serves, depleted uranium is about 50% denser than gold, a silvery grey, very hard metal. I wonder if could couldn't be alloyed to a less dense metal like copper to simulate gold?

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Believe it or not specific gravity for uranium is 18.7, a little less than gold at 19.2. This despite uranium's main isotope atomic weight at 238 is significantly over gold at 197. There is a correlation between atomic number, mass Vs specific gravity but it definitely isn't 1:1. Lead has a greater atomic weight than platinum. It has to do with how the material organizes its internal molecular structure.

U238 is a weak alpha emitter, not dangerous but definitely detectable with a geiger counter.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

I think the results of a specific gravity test on that coin would've been interesting....

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

If you were an enterprising Chinese coin counterfeiter, you would have bought that coin!:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Haha, I guess so...


What do you guys think about this:


Cheap but shouldn't this do the job in order for us to be able to get accurate measurements? We rarely see big coins like that, so I don't want to invest hundreds of dollars per location for something like the Fisch set.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Your making a nice profit on the scrap your buying. Spend a few dollars and get the Fisch sets.....piece of mind and all....

50 peso coin fakes,
 

I bought one you-know-where and it doesn't look right, but it passes the fisch test and flunks the gold pen test from local jeweler. Now I'm nervous. My cheapy scale says 41.8 grams.:confused_m:

Re: 50 peso coin fakes,
 

I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I read your post - I feel your pain.

Could you post a high-res photo of the coin in question?

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

50 pesos are 90%, with a gold content of 37.5g, are they not?

41.8 grams sounds about right.

Re: 50 peso coin fakes,
 

I'm not good with pictures but if you type in "replica 50 peso" on fleabay you see a coin that looks like mine, mine does not have the word copy on the edge though. I'm wondering how actuate pen testers are on coins?

Re: 50 peso coin fakes,
 

You better send that coin to me, right away!:565:

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

I actually bought the same few months ago.

I like the precision, which is higher than any official specification published.

The only drawback is that its stainless steel tip can easily scratch coins if not handled properly.

Re: 50 peso coin fakes,
 

World Coins book says 41.6666 grams weight x .900 = 37.49994 grams pure gold. I now believe my coin is o.k.

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

Thanks OrangeJuice, I ordered this morning and am looking forward to trying it out.


UPDATE:

I called our primary competitor today - they bought the coin and remembered the lady well.

I advised him to do an acid test, which they hadn't done before. After he dropped the acid, we talked shop for about 60 seconds until I asked him how it held up. Next thing I hear: "Oh shit. Oh no. Um, I need to call the owner."

:)

Re: Fake 1oz Maple Leaf?
 

It sounds like someone is going to learn the hard way to check more thoroughly next time - he'll probably get his pay docked, poor SOB.:no_ma: