By Jack D. Young, Early American Coppers (EAC), and the Dark Side Group ……
A little departure from my usual articles, this one focuses on a counterfeit half dollar in a counterfeit PCGS holder and stolen cert listed on AliExpress.
Searching the internet for the source of a couple of bad 1928 Peace Dollars (in an article to come!), I found them and this one as well.
The subject of this light rant is a bad not-PCGS 1807 half dollar graded AU58 and attributed by variety per the label.
Here is the AliExpress listing:
Looking at the images, I quickly identified it as what was nicknamed the “1833 type counterfeit”
from a family of different dated fakes. “1833” because it was the first I had seen and reported in a past CoinWeek article (see link); the red circled areas are common indicators of the bad coins, including the date fonts and location relative to a genuine example.
The PCGS online cert for the genuine coin had a TruView image, and a little digging found the genuine certified one in a registry set with an image in the holder.
Obviously bad for so many reasons, I decided to see if this could be reported through the AliExpress home page.
Looking through the “report” functions I found two for reporting “Intellectual Property Complaints”: one for the IP owner and the second for “non-rights holders”
I tried the reporting process – here are screen shots of my complaint about the fake coins through the images in the AliExpress system.
I honestly didn’t expect to get a response, but I think I would have been less angry over that than the response I did receive! They asked for more information only if I am the actual intellectual property owner, called it “unsubstantiated”, and closed the complaint:
“Thank you for your feedback, please provide more proof that the reported product is suspected of infringing the intellectual property rights of others, such as appraisal reports, rights holder statements, etc. If you have any comments or suggestions about the unsubstantiated report, you can appeal through online customer service or submit it to a certified out-of-court dispute resolution provider.”
So, not my fight and the “evidence” apparently didn’t matter.
I did post the images and effort on PCGS’ CU Forum just for information should they engage Ali on this issue.
I also revisited Ali’s reporting page and there is another option for “Restricted or Prohibited Products” – but of course “counterfeit” is NOT an option! I may take the time to try again using “other” as the choice, but I know I am running against the wind.
Best as Always,
—Jack
MORE Articles on Counterfeit Coins by Jack D. Young
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