Gold & Silver Forum - Fake Pandas

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- - Fake Pandas (http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=34343)

I'm a Panda fan along with several varieties of Australian silver coins.

Ebay is currently awash with fake silver Pandas from Chinese sellers. As of last week, probably around 90% of the coins were fakes. That ratio has eased a bit in the past few days. Though it looks like most of the coins are silver plated copper, they are apparently quite good and are marked 10 yuan and .999AG. (Thought counterfeiting was a death penalty in China)

Below is a URL to one of the Ebay discussion forums on the problem:

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.js...8&x#2001849008

I hate to admit that I was taken by the fakes, I was dumb enough to believe that I could get a 1983 Panda, a coin that sells for the high $500 range, for $16 and a couple of other equivalent bargains. I haven't gotten the "coins" yet but if it's too goods to be true------

Another Ebayer e-mailed me the next morning to inform me that I had probably been taken.

That's OK for me for now, it was a good lesson and it didn't really hurt me monetarily, I'm just POed for getting scammed.

The problem will occur when these coins get out into the overall market and get sold again by people who think they are selling the genuine thing. I don't have my hands on the "coins" yet but when I do, I'll weigh and measure them to see if there is some non-destructive way to tell that they are fake. Some of the people report cutting the coins open with snips, revealing copper interiors. An extension of this problem is that Pandas real and fake come in a hard plastic holder inside a soft plastic holder. If you were thinking of buying some and wanted to weigh and/or measure them, you would have to take them out of the hard and soft holders. This would destroy the soft holder.

Are any of you guys aware of this problem and know how to deal with it? The only immediately obvious way to protect yourself is to buy only from reputable dealers.

I'm :Sorry: to hear of your loss. It takes a good friend to warn others by telling how he was taken.:top:

It's not that I don't have silver in anything but 90% "junk", but Tom's story is a good reason I perfer to stick with those "worn" 90% coins.

Ebay is a rotten hotbed of fake everything. I was looking into selling stuff on ebay. I was checking the prices of stuff and I found these jackets that were red hot. I found a supplier and was thinking about taking the plunge. The margins were like 40-50% or more. Then I realized this major marketer wasn't selling their goods through wholesalers in China, who were promoting the stuff as authentic mfctr overruns.

The thing is, Ebay does jack to stop it.

Take whatever is hot on Ebay. Wait three weeks. Then half of what you see will be fake crap. Good luck getting your money back.

I'd avoid ebay like the plague. It's a rotten cesspool.

LG :smokin:

Quote:

Originally Posted by LikeGreen

You're in a great mood today. That time of the month?

Quote:

Originally Posted by LikeGreen

I have made good bucks on ebay buying and selling mostly PMs. Very little problems. A little common sense goes a log way.

Dunno about a rotten cesspool, but there sure is an air of the Wild Wild West there.......keep one hand on your pistol....same as any big flea market.....ahahahahaaa

I know quite a few who've made outstanding buys on Ebay. I never touch the stuff.

I just have a really bad taste after seeing all the totally blatant fakes they tolerate and act like there is nothing they can do about it.

I think you'll notice that one of the few things that really gets me going (like that coin guy trying to buy numismatics at 'over spot' and the spammers stealing traffic) is underhandedness and ripoffs. It sends me ballistic. I try to be as honest as a human being can in my dealings and flip when others think it's OK to steal and cheat. I wonder what gutter they came from and how I can stamp them out.

I'll over react and come out guns blazing.

I spend a lot of time thinking about ethics, karma, how to be a good person. I need to let it go when others, obviously, do not.

No doubt most of ebay is up and up. But with the $20 shipping and handlers, the chinese fakes, the boxes of rocks instead of a VCR or whatever, it leaves me feeling pretty negative.

Sorry if it came out wrong. I think Wild West is a better description and one I have used myself.

I'm really a happy guy, despite posts like that!

LG :coolbeer:

You gotta love LG's brutal honesty. Quite the firecracker and doesn't hold back on a punch.

Good qualities in my book. :D

MT Silver
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Thanks MT. Sometimes it's easy to go off a little too much behind the keyboard. Gotta watch that.

Adios.

LikeGreen :smokin:

Not all, or even a significant percentage, of my Ebay buys have been bad. I've bought 6 100 oz silver bars there in the last year with no problem, got all at a discount to spot (don't bother looking for deals now). Last weekend I got 7 Canadian 1/2 oz gold proof coins for $1,850, that's a deal that anyone here would take.

I've had one other minor burn, coins advertised as silver that were not, but the total cost was $8.50. There are catches in the Ebay waters but there are sharks too.

I saw those fake Panda's on ebay last week. The listing I saw stated they were not .999 silver, in the fine print. Glad I read it all.