By Len Ratzman – The California Numismatist – CoinLink Content Partner

The high only lasted a couple of hours.

It took only that long to find out that my friend’s 1795 Flowing Hair 3-leaf dollar in MS-55 (my estimate) that had been left to her by her greatgrandfather was, sadly, only a good counterfeit.

When Sarah called me from work that day, she didn’t even say hello. Her fi rst, excited words were, “Len, what do you know about old dollars?” I told her my thirty-plus years in numismatics coveting only buffalo nickels didn’t include silver dollars of any age. But, since she knew nothing about coins, she knew from 20 years of friendship that I could research the coin for her.

When she told me over the phone that the dollar was dated 1795, it didn’t take a specialist in the hobby to know instantly what potential value laid waiting to be realized.

I jumped into the car and made it to the restaurant where she worked in 11 minutes—normally a 20 minute drive. With my loupe already in hand, I said, “Hi,” and with indescribable anticipation asked her to show me the coin.

Although my grading skills only covered buffaloes from 30 years of studying them, I could still tell from the fi ne detail that, if genuine, the grading companies would probably register the dollar as an MS-55 or better. Cha-ching!

The next two hours were a blur of researching the Internet, visiting coinrelated Web sites, phone calls to local dealers and opening that latest Red Book to a section I hadn’t ever paid attention to.

But wait! A $30,000 coin just popping up out of nowhere? If it’s too good to be true, it usually isn’t. So, before I started making plans to send in the coin to be registered, I dug a little deeper and learned from a prominent expert on dollars that countless counterfeits from a foreign country had reached the states and there were two ways to tell a fake from the real thing: (more…)