Back in 2005 I was living in Frankfurt, Germany and enjoying life. 2 years earlier I began collecting Silver Morgan and Peace Dollars. One Saturday while visiting the weekly River Fair, I struck GOLD (Silver). So I thought!!!
During the Saturday fair in Frankfurt I would say around 10,000 people converge along the River Mein (Main in English). I was walking through the crowds of people looking at all of the tables and booths for silver coins.
One day I lucked out and bought a roll of 5 Mark silver coins (20 in all) from World War 2. Pretty cool coins.
This is what one of the coins looks like from Germany
Anyway, I was walking around and spotted a lady selling about 50 Silver Peace and Morgan dollars. I was like "SWEET". Major score!!! I then asked the lady the prices of the coins. She told me 12 Euro (around $13 a piece). I then began going through the coins on the old dusty table. The lady looked like she was from Eastern Europe.
As I picked up about 12 of the coins (all the money I had to purchase with) I handed them to the lady. She took my money and was wrapping the coins up for me. As she was doing this an old German man came up to me and said in German "Those coins are not real". He then took one of the coins I just purchased and took out a magnet. He then placed the magnet on the coin in his hand and the magnet stuck to the coin. We tried every coin to see if they were also counterfeit. They were all counterfeit. The German then stood up for me and screamed at the lady saying "you are a crook, give him his money back right now".
The lady had fear in her eyes and quickly handed me my money back. She was not German so she was probably a guest in Germany on a visa, or an illegal. I handed the FAKE coins back to her and proceeded to thank the kind German man for backing me up.
The point of this story. Always be on guard when buying silver or gold coins/bullion. Bring your testers with you because these coins look absolutely REAL. Fooled me and I was a collector. Be smart, take your time when buying, and run those magnets over the coins and also do a ping test.
Good Luck fellow stackers. Keep stacking and keep STEEMING.
This Article was written by me, Tim Crowe and has been re-posted due to low viewership.
(All images in this article are credited to google imaging search)