Bitcoin Forum

Hey there fellow collectors! 

I am fairly new at collecting physical crypto coins, and I've come to enjoy it  ;D 

Someone locally has contacted me regarding a collection of Cascasious coins.  I've checked the uberbills site, and all are still loaded.

Any telltale signs it is counterfeit and if the hologram has been tampered with?   Or any other potential scams or legal issues in dealing with coins?

Thanks! :)

The hologram will have a honeycomb look to it if it has been compromised.

Like this:
https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FDUmUoVJ.jpg&t=563&c=wV4DqF_Htg7s9A

As far as I know there are no counterfeit Casascius coins around so far. Started to see "makeshift" Casascius coins on places like ebay, that use a much cheaper aluminium version with unofficial holograms but they are easily distinguishable from the originals.

Maybe a year ago I remember seeing someone using some sort of needle, possibly combined with heat or other chemicals, to tease open a hologram and reapply it with minimal damage? Forgotten how successful the attack was but it got some media attention. In theory they could steal the bitcoin after selling the coin if they had the key, but there is no evidence of this happening.

I was recently shown this fake Casascius coin. It looks pretty convincing to me.

EDIT: I've removed markings from the seller to make it harder for scamming scum to get these.

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You must thinking of Defcon 21.
There was evidence indeed, but you need to look closely "slight visible damage". 

If you are putting a significant amount of money at risk, you should hire someone with experience handling these coins to come along and help evaluate the coins.  This particular forum is filled with experts on these coins and this forum has a pretty reliable trust system built into it that you can use to evaluate the trustworthiness of the person offering the services.  I live in the SF bay area and am willing to look at coins in the area to help evaluate.  Other people like Blazed are highly trusted and offer escrow services, I would trust him to evaluate any coin for me but I wouldn't trust him to give it a numismatic rating. <3 Blazed :P

Some things to consider if you go it alone:
 
If this is a large stash of all the same coin type, I would encourage you to discuss the possibility of peeling a random one of your choosing in the batch before buying.
 
Post high quality pictures here before buying for the community to evaluate.  We are good at sniffing these things out.
 
Good luck!

All things aside, your more likely to get ripped off from price then with counters at this point.  Everyone has a good understanding of prices, if you want to post the lot we can probably come up with a good negotiating range for you.

Exactly the above.

Check funding
Check for any signs of tampering
Look at the coin conditions to see if there is any damage that will reduce the value (higher graded coins generally will attract a higher premium)

Some coins have a greater premium than others
Double error 1 BTC errors
1 BTC error 'Day 1' coins
Series 2 silver halfs
10 BTCs
All carry high premiums due to rarity or desirability

2013 0.5 and 1.0 brass significantly less so

The forum will give you a fair range for what you are looking at

Never be worried about asking for help. All of the folks who have posted above, or who have been mentioned, know their stuff. If you say where you are from, I am sure there will be a trusted coiner who would help you out (they would be sniffing out a deal themselves !)

I also havent seen any fakes that would pass a preliminary look. Either hologram or font has given away the only 1 I saw - a 25 coin. Even without the discrepancies, I knew that one was fake, as at the time I had the original !!

As with all face to face transactions, do it in a public place. Finally, if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is. If its a good deal today, then its a good deal tomorrow, dont get rushed into it if something doesnt feel right

Thanks for all of the advice so far. 


Thanks, Og, I will look out for the honeycomb look.

Yes, the deal does seem too good to be true...If anyone is in the Boston area, wanna check out some coins with me  :D

Just as an example of how it seems too good to be true:  she wants to sell some coins at the btc price only.  So, a 2011  1 BTC solid brass, and she only wants 1 btc. 

She says it was from her ex for her son.  So she just wants the money and doesn't want to deal with the hassle of ebay.   :P 

Another concern is her ex finding out and claiming the coins were his. 

Not that unlikely taking the price of bitcoin into consideration.

I dunno, seems a bit weird to me. She can easily charge 1.1. If she wants 1btc then she should redeem it.

Not all are trading casascius coins and use bitcoin on a regular basis, those people see "743 USD" and would be happy with that amount if getting cash in hand, especially if they got the coin cheaper or for free.

My guess is she does not know how, if they are real and doesnt want to mess with it.  I know if my wife wanted to sell my cas coins she wouldnt know the first thing about peeling and redeeming.

In that case, I will offer your wife face value for your collection  ::)

Thanks to Hellot and Wheelz for advising me to peel a random 1 or 2.

I think I will do that.

I just talked to her on the phone and she does sound legit.  We are meeting at a police station to exchange cash and coins (her brother is a cop).

I think she just sees them as worth a lot of money, and she wants to make a quick sale.

And I will cross my fingers and keep you guys updated with pics

Michael1 just wrote a guide on redeeming coins:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1513929.0

I would say that you are pretty good to go if you bring a laptop with an offline version of bitaddress.org to convert the Mini private key to a QR, then just sweep the key with Mycelium using your android phone's camera. Its very easy and fast with this method. Should not take more than a few minutes to validate.

By principal should you also check that the corresponding public key generated by bitaddress is on this list: https://www.casascius.com/fulllist.txt

Edit:
You could actually skip the sweeping part. If you input the private key into bitaddress.org and the corresponding public key appears on fulllist.txt, then would you know that the private key could only have been made by Casascius. Would be nice to also see that the address is still funded too on the blockchain.

Well shit im pulling for you tommy.  Dont know about anyone else but ive been waiting for something like this to happen, keep us informed and let us know how it goes.

@Tommy How many coins are approximate talking about?

And good luck from me too.

Thanks Wheelz and TookDk.  Tbh, it is making me nervous.  we are trying to set up a day and time. 

As for the number of coins, it is hard to tell based on the pics, but I counted 8.

As for waiting for something like this to happen, can anybody speak to this?  With the idea that this is not a hoax, is this a once every 5, 10 years?  Longer? 

Even when Casascius sold them they were sold for above face value to cover costs.  Depending on the coin, you could buy them today and sell them here for more than double face value in a heart beat.  That's easy money.

Might never happen again who knows, guess it all depends on how mainstream bitcoin becomes.  Right now i would say the average person still has no clue about it other then the crazy stories that are misreported in the mass news.  The longer it stays that way i guess the more it will happen

I lol'd.

At the risk of being dismayed by your answer, approximately what volume of cash/BTC are we talking about here?

Well, Nubbins,

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction  :D

Either I am getting conned big time, or maybe a little luck is pointed in my way.  I hope it’s good luck. 

So as to how many btc, well, I gotta keep that secretive.  It adds to the story  ;)



So I have decided to peel one of them just to keep her honest, and also to break my cherry so to speak.  Any advice would be appreciated.  I am planning on bringing my mini leatherman knife to get the hologram off.

I wanna thank TookDk, whose gave the advice about looking up the private address on bitadress.org to see if it corresponds to the public key.  That should make things pretty easy to verify. 

So folks, I gotta open one, and it will be a 1 btc coin.  Here are the two choices:
 

1) gold-plated date- unknown

2) solid brass 2012

Which one do you think I should cut open?  Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks guys for the advice and the good luck sent my way :)

I'd say there is a lot less 2012 brass series for sale here than any casascius silver.  But the silver had lower mintage's. 

gold plated 1btc coin?

if its a silver coin why would you open that lol if its not what the hell is gold plated thats 1 btc

Oh....i thought they were all brass.   Dont break the silvers...if there is a 2013 brass break that one, then 2012, then 2011 series 2, then silver, then 2011 error.  Just my 2 cents on the situation.

If there are multiple years/metal types then you actually might be onto an actual treasure.....

I'd say something fishy is up if she's selling a silver 1BTC at 1BTC. I'd just offer to help her redeem it at this point.

If the gold plated casascius thing happens to be a bar, don't redeem it. Some bars are worth a fair bit.

I really can't think of a Casascius (coin, could be a bar I suppose) that doesn't have the year on the front so the "date unknown" is a little concerning. I regard to the "gold-plated" maybe it's a 25BTC and she's blind!

If you would like feel free to PM me for my phone number and I can talk you through which coin would be the most cost effective to peel as well as what to look for. I'm not an expert but I have a fair amount of experience with these coins.  

At the risk of beating a dead horse, be careful and good luck!  ;D

I wrote  "date unknown" because the uberbills Casascius Bitcoin Analyzer did not give any date. 

So, there are brass and silver coins.  There is a .1 btc silver that I could peel away, but I am concerned that, if they are counterfeit, the seller would keep the lowest denomination coin real, because that is what she would expect me to pick.

I think there may be a .5 btc brass coin.  I guess, that, whenever we do meet, I will choose that, unless anyone has any other suggestions.

My suggestions:

1) Hire a lawyer for an afternoon because doing this inside a police station is literally retarded. Why would you buy thousands of $$ worth of collectibles from a stranger inside a police station?

2) Put some more thought into the fact that you're considering spending thousands of dollars on something you apparently know little to nothing about. Your assertion that the buyer would expect you to peel the 0.1 demonstrates a laughable lack of understanding on your part. Not trying to be rude, but you're obviously a rube when it comes to these coins, and if I can figure that out just from reading a couple of your forum posts, the seller definitely knows you're a rube too.

3) Take some time to think about what you'll do when you're inside a police station with a cop staring at you, and you realize some (or all) of the coins are fake. Will you call the cop's sister out on it? Will you just buy them anyway? If you refuse to buy them, what if the cop says something to you about the amount of cash you're carrying around? What if they try to pressure you into the sale?

Just advice, take it or leave it.

TBH, I think you're going to wind up ripped off, arrested, beaten up, or some combination of the above.

The coins that you may be buying could've been purchased by someone long ago who only thinks of them as interesting trinkets, worth little more than the BTC stored in them. If they don't follow the collectibles market, then they'd have no clue as to the actual collector value. (And I'd wager that at least 90% of all bitcoin enthusiasts do not follow the collectibles market.)

That said, there were counterfeit Casascius stickers a while ago, and a ton of Casascius knockoffs on eBay. (Read a warning from the Casascius blog HERE (https://casascius.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/possible-counterfeits-to-be-aware-of/).)

Perhaps you could snap a few closeups of the coins and post them on here to get opinions on authenticity or evidence of tampering / redemption. I'd guess that if the seller were honest and legitimate, then she wouldn't mind you taking 10-20 minutes to wait on a few opinions. I wouldn't mind, if I were the seller. Buy me a cup of coffee while we wait, and I'm good. But that's me...

Regardless, good luck with your Casascius adventure. I hope it works out. They're awesome little coins! ;D

Regards,
Chris

Okay, I have a question when I meet up with the person  How do I open a slab?  They all look like they have been graded.  Sorry, newbie question.

Don't open the slab.

Were the coins graded by ANACS? If so, then the slab will have an ID number on the back, and you can look up the ID number on the ANACS website HERE (http://www.anacs.com/Populations/CertVerification.aspx). That'll tell you if it was a legitimate grading (date of grading, etc). If the grading was legitimate (and long enough ago), then the possibility of a counterfeit coin is pretty slim, in my opinion.

What does the ANACS website say?

Me

LEL.

What if the slabs are fake? I could fetch a list of a few dozen valid ANACS certs right now from this forum.

Why is someone selling SLABBED coins at face value?

None of this adds up, OP is troll or OP's seller is troll

I really don't think this is legit. Maybe you're super lucky, but being realistic I'd say you can just tell them how to redeem their coins. I wouldn't get involved, even if it does seem like a good idea.

I'd say it's not impossible, but highly unlikely that this is legit.

nubbins, take a deep breath.  You aren't related to this person, are you?

http://www.hulu.com/watch/68225

I don't think I'm literally mentally retarded, but maybe figuratively I am.  And no, I have no reason to troll.

Who knows, maybe I'll get ripped off.  Or worse.  But, a former college buddy always used to say, no balls, no baby.

If/when I meet her, I will let everyone know what I got.  Yes, it could be a bunch of bs.  But I like the story so far :)

I'm wondering how you came to the conclusion of "They all look like they have been graded." ?

Do you have a picture of the graded coins that the individual shared?  It should be extremely obvious if they are graded and please keep in mind that grading costs nearly $20 per coin so if they are trying to offload 10 coins that have been graded for just face value, they are literally giving you ~$200 of value for nothing.