Contemporary Forgeries with Chopmarks

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, China had no unified national silver coinage. What circulated instead was a mixture of foreign trade dollars from mints around the world, each with different designs, weights, and fineness standards, assessed through private testing rather than any official guarantee. Counterfeiting thrived in this environment, from crude cast pieces and lightly silvered fakes to carefully struck imitations of Mexican and Spanish-American dollars. The chopmarks visible on some of the counterfeits here are less surprising than they seem. A forgery that contained silver of acceptable quality was, in the eyes of a shroff, acceptable silver, and could legitimately receive a chopmark after testing. We might call these coins "imitations". The more troubling cases, as documented in the shroff handbooks, are coins with little or no silver content whose chopmarks were themselves part of the fraud, applied to suggest prior approval that never happened. We should call this category true counterfeits. Look through the coins below and see if you can differentiate between "fake" and "real" chopmarks.

"1246"-Mo MF Mexico 8 Reales Philip V type

"1710"-Mo FM Mexico 8 Reales Carlos IIII type

"1769"-Mo MF Mexico 8 Reales Carolus III type

"1780"-Mo FM Mexico 8 Reales "FERDISN VII" type

"1787"-Mo FM Mexico 8 Reales "CAROLUS IIII" type

"1807"-LM JP Peru 8 Reales Carolus IIII type with "Double Happiness" Paper Chop

"1815"-Mo JF Mexico 8 Reales Ferdinand VII type

"1837-54" Tenpo Ichibu

"1840" British East India Company Rupee

"1854"-Zs OM Mexico 8 Reales

"1860"-Mo TH Mexico 8 Reales

"1860"-Mo FH Mexico 8 Reales

Specifications:
26.84 g (Spec: 27.07 g)
Metal content (from XRF): Cu: 67.1% Zn: 15.4% Ag: 13.5% Ni: 3.7% Pb: 0.3% Co: 0.1%

Details:
With help from Bob Gurney (a.k.a. SwamperBob on the Cointalk forums), expert on 18th/19th century Mexican counterfeits, I learned the following:

This is a silver plated coin with base metal core, somewhat scarce with the plated silver this well preserved. Of particular interest, this counterfeit is linked to a large hoard discovered at a reclamation dumpsite in North Central Mexico in the 1990's. Literally tens of thousands of late (second Republican) counterfeits were found buried in a dump where the Mexican Government buried them after they were stripped of actual silver plate.

Bob says "The processing facility operated until about 1913 - 1920 (the date of the latest issue I have seen is a 1913 Cabalito Peso.) The details about the hoard were hard to discover until I contacted one of the finders and he agreed to tell me part of the story, omitting where the facility was and who played a role. The dump was located near the ruins of a refinery that was associated with a silver mine. The coins were found buried in various types of containers. Some were glass others metal. Loose coins have never been mentioned. There was at the time a large area that had not been cleared of the counterfeits. No clear estimate has been made of how many coins were found. The hoard was smuggled out (it is/was on state property and digging at the site is illegal). It was located by a group of metal detectorists (number of original finders varies on who tells the story) and the coins were removed at night by mule or burro. They have been on the market since about 1995. The hoard coins are stripped. I presume they were treated to remove the silver because the cores show evidence of corrosive effects and no traces of silver. There were a few non-silver coins mixed in. The earliest dates I have seen are the late 1840s. Your coin is in far better shape than 90% of the hoard items."

This particular coin somehow escaped this refinery and traveled overseas, so it's neat to have a general idea of origin.

Notable chopmarks:

Probably 古 - Liushutong script variant of 古 - gǔ - old, classic, ancient Probably 古 seal form - Liushutong script variant of 古 - gǔ - old, classic, ancient

Unknown chopmark

元 - yuán - first; dollar; origin; head

江 - jiāng - large river; the Yangzi; surname

Possible 田 - Bronze script variant of 田 - tián - field, arable land, cultivated Possible 田 seal form - Bronze script variant of 田 - tián - field, arable land, cultivated