They Bought These Silver Eagles Online... Then Noticed THIS!

What I'm gonna share with you in today's video is both unfortunate and very scary because I'm going to be sharing with you two fake Silver Eagles, one of them proof with the box and the COA, it's mind-blowing, and the other one is one of the best uncirculated fake Silver Eagles I have seen in a long time. Now, these are both coins that were sent to me by viewers. One of them I just recently got, the other one I've had for a couple of months, and both of these viewers got these coins online, I believe, both from eBay. So it's very important that you get your silver and gold from a reputable source because this is one of those things that makes silver stacking scary for a lot of new beginners and even keeps people out of stacking completely because they're worried they'll end up with things like this in their stack. So I hope you guys stick with me and watch this video, especially to see this proof, because if you don't know what you're looking at, you could absolutely get fooled. But really quick, before I start showing you, go down below, make sure you're subscribed. We're almost at 200,000 subscribers, and I would love for you to be one of them. There's only a couple of weeks left for you to enter SD Bullion's 2024 Monster Box of Silver giveaway. Make sure you go to the link in my description below and get your chance to win 500 ounces of silver. Thank you to SD Bullion for sponsoring my channel. Now, I wanna start by taking a look at the proof Silver Eagles, and right out of the gate, I'm gonna tell you that one of these is in fact fake and the other one is real. And I don't know which one is which, because if you look at it right now, just by looking at the box, it's nearly impossible to tell. In fact, it is impossible to tell. And the reason for that is that both of these boxes, I believe, are actually real, legitimate, US Silver Eagle or proof Silver Eagle boxes. And I'm gonna explain how that is in just a minute. But let's go ahead and open it up and take a look. Inside, we both have original clamshells, and we even have certificates of authenticity. And all of this looks legit to real proof Silver Eagles. Take a look at these clamshell boxes. The hinges look right. The tabs look right. Both of the emblems look 100% correct for proof Silver Eagles. And if we open it up, you can see it opens up the exact same way both of them do. That's crazy. But one of these is fake. Let's take a look at them really close. And in fact, let's get them out of the box. So now that we have them out of the box, do me a favor and tell me which one of these is fake just by looking at it. I'm gonna give you just a second, but I want you to leave a comment and let me know if you feel like it. But be honest, it's okay if you got it wrong. But if you believe that the left one is the fake one, you are 100% correct. The right one is the real Silver Eagle. Now looking at these, for me, because I deal with these a lot, it's very easy to tell that this one is fake and that this one is real. Well, maybe this one's not real, but it is real. But my point is, it's really easy for me to tell that this one is fake. There is a lot going on with the dress and the drapery. The font isn't right on In God We Trust at all. Neither is the font for the year 2000. Take a look at the difference between the real and the fake. Look at the font difference on In God We Trust. It's way different. 2000 is way different as well. Now, another thing that's really gonna give you these away is if we flip them. Watch what happens and tell me if you see it. Uh-oh, do you see the difference? Our fake one is flipping wrong. So US coins, like this real one, flip top to bottom. This one flips left to right. So they made a major mistake on that. Now, there is another thing that gives this away, and that is in the year 2000, proof silver eagles were minted in Philadelphia. However, this 2000 proof silver eagle apparently was minted in West Point. I mean, I guess there might be a West Point in China because that's probably where this came from. But my point is that it also has the incorrect mint mark. Now, as I said, both of these have COAs, and if we take a look at the COAs, the COAs also both look 100% legitimate, but you'll notice that this one in the fake is a 2001, and our real one does have the real year 2000. Now, there is a reason that this is happening. There is a reason that you're seeing fake proof silver eagles in real proof silver eagle boxes, and that's because a lot of proof silver eagles are opened and sent off without the clamshell, without the box, without the COA, to grading companies like PCGS, NGC, CAC, and Annex, and they send them off to get them certified, but afterwards, they have a bunch of boxes that they no longer need. Well, people will buy these. They'll sell them for just a couple of bucks each on like eBay, or maybe they'll sell them out of the shop, or they'll sell them in bulk to somebody who wants them for whatever reason, and one of those reasons is, unfortunately, they will fool people by taking fake proof silver eagles, putting them in clamshells with the COA in the box, you get it all together, you close it up, and then you can sell it as a real proof silver eagle, and for somebody who is not very skilled at looking at these, someone who doesn't see them all the time, they could easily get fooled by looking at this. This looks 100% legit unless you know that there are issues with the coin that you are looking at, and that is why it is so, so important that if you're a new stacker or a new collector that you get your coins from a legitimate source unless you know how to test them yourself because what's gonna happen is if you bought this at like a flea market or at a yard sale or at a swap meet or whatever it is, by the time you get it home and then realize it's fake, that seller may be long gone and you wind up stuck with a fake silver eagle that's worth basically just the box that it's in. Now I wanna take a look at the uncirculated silver eagles, and like I said, one of these is one of the best fakes I've seen in a very long time, although it is not perfect. Take a look at it really quick and tell me if you can see which one is fake. Leave a comment down below again and let me know if you got it right. Now if you guessed that this one was the fake one, well, unfortunately you're wrong. It's actually this one right here, but if you'll notice, it's really close. Now let's do the flip test. Oh snap, it passes the flip test as well, and that eagle looks really good also. In fact, this looks really, really good, but I assure you that this one right here is fake. Let's take a look and see how we can tell. First, we're gonna pull it out. Now if you'll remember, the US Mint created this revolutionary, mind-blowing security feature that absolutely cannot be taken advantage of. There's no way you can make a fake silver eagle with this brand new security feature that the US Mint started with the new Type II Silver Eagle. I mean, literally, it's physically impossible to get around this new security feature, and that is a missing read on the rim of the coin in a different position every year. Oh snap, it's there, but maybe it's in the wrong position because this is a 22, right? Maybe it's in the wrong position, and that's how we can tell that this is a fake 22. Oh no, the missing read's in the exact same spot. Well done, US Mint, your new security feature is great. It's done so well, thank you, I really appreciate it. But yes, if you look at it, the finish doesn't look right on the fake one as well, but man, that looks really, really good. Now here's how I can tell. The first thing I can tell you is that if we get a pair of calipers, the fake one, while not much, is actually just a little bit, little bit smaller in diameter than our real one. Let me show you what I mean. So we're gonna take our calipers, and I know these are metal calipers, don't give me trouble, it is what it is, I hope I don't scratch my coin, but we'll see that our real Silver Eagle should be 40.6 millimeter. And there it is right there, I can let go of the coin so you can see it's holding the coin in place, no hand. So it is exactly 40.6 millimeters, just like it should be. Let's take a look at our fake, I should say. And you can see our fake is actually 40.2 millimeters. So it is a little bit smaller in diameter, and we'll go ahead and look at the thickness as well, and we'll push this all the way back to the back so it's measuring the exact same way. And you can see that our thickness is 3.01. Now we'll do it with our real one, and I know this is where I'm gonna scratch the coin. It's for science, so it's okay, it's to teach. You can see that our thickness is 2.83. So this one is smaller in diameter, but a little bit thicker. It does, however, weigh, and I'm not gonna show you, you just have to trust me, it does weigh exactly one troy ounce, just like this one. So they did that by making the dimensions just a little bit different, but it's also not going to pass the ping test, so we'll grab our ping tester. And by the way, guys, if you've never seen these before, I've reviewed it, I've talked about it many times on the channel, I'll put a link to one of those videos down below. The ping test is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to test a Silver Eagle. We're gonna put this in here. We're gonna pull it back, we're gonna let it go, and you can hear that beautiful, beautiful silver sound. Let's see what our fake one sounds like. Oh man, it's actually a pretty sound, but it is way higher pitched than normal. You hear that difference? But if you aren't used to the way silver sounds, or if you're confused, or if you think it sounds good, and maybe it's not, you just wanna double check, there is a way you can do that by just using an app. This is stackertools.com forward slash first. It's free right now, and you can absolutely use it, especially if you have a pocket pinger, because it's the same company that makes the pocket pinger, also makes this website. And you can test it right here. So we're gonna go to type two Silver Eagle, and we're gonna hit start. And what it's gonna do is listen to our Silver Eagle, listen to the way it sounds, and tell us if it's hitting all the resonance patterns that it should hit. Basically, it's gonna tell us if it sounds correct. Here we go. We'll hit start. So we pinged it a few times, and you can see that it is telling us that it did in fact fail the test. That is unfortunate. Now you can see that it actually did peak in some of the frequencies that it's supposed to, but it missed some that it's supposed to have as well. Now, what if we used our real Silver Eagle? Let's do it again with our real Silver Eagle. I feel so bad for the Silver Eagle. I'm beating it up now, but here we go. And if you'll look, you can see it peaked everywhere it's supposed to. All those blue lines is exactly where they expect it to be. And it says, past all sound tests, confirm size and weight, more info. Now I don't have it calibrated, I believe, for my phone. Yeah, that's way too big. So you would have to calibrate it for the size phone that you have. But it does look pretty good, and it's actually getting really, really close. In fact, it's scary how close they are getting. Eventually, you are going to have to have a way to test your Silver on your own, or you're gonna have to buy it only from reputable sources because, man, it's getting bad. So it's getting really scary. Like, I mean, don't get me wrong, both of those Silver Eagles had problems, but the proof in the box makes it really easy to fool people. And that uncirculated one, while it had flaws, it was way closer than it needs to be. And the fact that it had the correct missing read, well, that just goes to show you that the missing read thing's stupid. I mean, and we all said that when it came out, but I don't know. Anyway, guys, that's what I had. Let me know if you've run across anything like this, if you've ever bought fakes off of eBay, you had to return them to eBay, giving your money back. Anything like that ever happened to you, I would love to know. Leave a comment down below. And if you want more info on the Pocket Pinger, there is an affiliate link down below, so make sure you go check that out. If you get one of those from the link, it does support the channel, so thank you. And if you have any other comments or questions, leave them below as well. Do me a favor though, on your way out, don't forget to subscribe. Like I said earlier, we're almost at 200,000 subscribers. I'd love for you to be one of them. And other than that, have a great rest of your day. We'll see you next time.