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Writer's pictureWinston Zack

General Updates and Counterfeit 3cS Article


General Updates.


I recently acquired a new variety of Barber quarter from a collector. This piece is a 1904 (P) transfer die struck on a brass planchet.

 



I’m still at 97% complete with my next Bad Metal Silver. 50c and S$ book. I’m still waiting to study a large group of counterfeit CBHs and XRF analyze about 160 counterfeit U.S. coin varieties. On the subject of XRF, I may have found an opportunity to rent an XRF analyzer for a month to get this done ‘at my leisure’. I'm now hoping to get this next book printed by or about April 2025.

 

I’ve recently added a handful more counterfeit U.S. coins in the SHOP section of this website.

 

I’ll be heading to my one and only coin show of the year in a few days, the Whitman Baltimore show. I’m really looking forward to catching up with folks in person and all other numismatic things!

 

I plan to finalize and share my article on counterfeit Morgan dollars sometime in the next month. In the meantime, I’ve drafted the following blog article to share because recent events made this subject a greater priority.


The Problem with Attributing Low Die-Quality Counterfeit 3cS Varieties

 

My publication, Bad Metal Silver. 3cS to 25c, documented seven (7) ‘No Date Recorded’, or NDR, varieties, and some barely identifiable and confirmed dated varieties including 1853 Z3-X and 1853 Z4-AC, all of which are attributed to the No Time for Skills family. What these nine (9) varieties have in common, which largely differs from most of the other hand-made die varieties, are (1) simpler and cruder die details (probably all hand-engraved), (2) weaker and/or uneven striking, and (3) potentially cruder and inconsistent planchet dimensions. As a result, very few individual examples between these 9 varieties have been documented with at least 75% of their die details, and most exhibit somewhere between 25 and 50% die details. Instead, to get a more complete understanding of die details for any one of these 9 varieties, you will likely need to study multiple examples of that variety which exhibit varying and overlapping die details.

 

Let’s first dive into NDR Z1-U. This is a relatively common counterfeit 3cS variety despite most examples, in my opinion, exhibiting no more than 67% of their die details. By the time this edition of Bad Metal was published, I had seen about 15 examples and none had a solidly clear and complete date, especially the last digit. However, around June 2023, an example of this variety surfaced with the clearest date I’ve ever seen. The date on this variety is clearly 1852 (shown). As such, this variety is now moved from NDR status to being attributed as 1852 Z2-U.



The 6 remaining Bad Metal published NDR attributed 3cS varieties are still known by less than 5 examples. This results in a poor population to study other examples and gain more information about their more complete die details, including the dates the counterfeiter chose to engrave into the dies. It is still presumed that most of the remaining 6 NDR varieties will have 1851, 1852 or 1853 dates.


In September of this year, I had the opportunity to purchase a crude 3cS counterfeit variety. When I purchased the piece from the owner, I wasn’t certain what the variety was. Like the other No Time for Skills family varieties, I reasonably assumed this was a documented variety despite the die details on this piece not clearly and immediately matching any of the 9 documented varieties. The closest potential match was to 1853 Z4-AC (only 1 example of this variety has been documented). However, the counterfeit 3cS I purchased showed striking details which were exactly opposite those of the 1853 Z4-AC Bad Metal plate example, and thus no clear match with any overlapping die details. One notable die detail on the example I purchased is the reverse star at 6 o’clock which is double punched; the star immediately to the right may also be double punched. In any event, this piece sits in my collection unattributed for the time being. It may either match a documented/published variety or it may be a newly discovered variety! What are your thoughts about this variety. Is it Z4-AC, a different published variety, or do you think this is an undocumented variety?

 


Less than 2 months later, at the beginning of November 2024, a crude 3cS counterfeit was listed on eBay which I purchased; this piece was not attributed as a counterfeit by the seller. Immediately prior to purchasing this piece, I did some quick due diligence comparison to the published counterfeit 3cS varieties in Bad Metal (I still don’t have all the counterfeit 3cS varieties memorized). The immediate issue I had in the comparative analysis of the eBay piece was the typical poor striking details and the not bad but not superb eBay photos. The closest potential match I could find to a documented and published variety was NDR Z3-W because the obverse central shield showed some unevenness and connectedness in some of the vertical bars, a detail different enough from the other 8 crude counterfeit 3cS varieties. I don’t own an example of NDR Z3-W, so if this eBay piece was a match to this variety, I would be happy adding a new variety to my collection; I’m currently missing 12 hand-made die 3cS varieties, so it’s getting tough to fill holes in this collection. However, after purchasing this piece, cropping the images, and studying the details more closely, this eBay piece did not match NDR Z3-W and appears to be a new die marriage with a new obverse and reverse die! This new die marriage will be documented as NDR Z8-AI. Given the rarity of many documented counterfeit 3cS hand-made dies, of which 22 are still known by less than 5 examples, it is not unexpected that new varieties, especially those attributed to the No Time for Skills family, are still out there to be discovered and documented.



Thanks for reading and feel free to share your comments and input.

-Winston



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