I RECENTLY HAVE BOUGHT A COUPLE COUNTERFIT COINS ON E-BAY. The type coins were United states Trade dollars and some California Freactional Gold tokens. There are 2 easy ways to tell if these coins are counterfit. All california gold Tokens that have bears on them are FAKE, and Counterfit. All Trade dollars mint markered “O” are fake. Trade dollars were only minted in San Francisco, Phillidelphia, and Carson city. Trade dollars were made to send to the orient to be used for currency. At the time of their minting the people of the orient didn’t like to use Gold, copper or nickel for coins, so we minted silver trade dollars. China is the biggest counterfiter of these coins, and several people on e-bay are selling them as “replica’s or “Souvenier” coins. It is illeagal to buy or sell any coin that was ever minted in America and used as leagal tender unless the words replica or copy appear on the coin somewhere. So what I am telling you is to be very careful about what you buy and sell.

The trade dollars counterfitted in China are very good looking, and sell there at the price of 2 for a dollar. I am sure knowing the Orient as I do, ( spent a lot of time in S. Korea ) some one could get a better price in bulk. I will write more about specific Fakes and counterfits later.If you want a good quality counterfit coin, you can get one from a seller called reprodragon, as it is illeagal to buy and sell counterfit coins, I don’t recomend you purchase any of these. I bought a coin from him not knpowing it was counterfit, and it is a good looking coin.

silver-coins.org has some good additonal information on this subject

Good luck and happy hunting