Challenges of Testing Silver and Gold Coins

Testing silver and gold coins presents several significant challenges. Coins can be plated or coated, making it difficult to determine their true composition without damaging them.

Precision is also crucial because some counterfeits are made with precious metals but at lower purities. Achieving highly accurate results without cutting into the coins or directly examining their interiors becomes challenging even from a scientific point of view.

Fake coins are often coated with precious metals, making surface detection methods like XRF and the touchstone test ineffective. Non-destructive tests must instead rely on a few key properties of metals, such as density, conductivity, strength, and magnetism, to distinguish real precious metals from fakes. However, counterfeiters continuously find ways to mimic these properties. For example, tungsten has a density similar to gold, so it's sometimes used as a core material in counterfeit gold coins.

Since fake coins can be made from many different materials and alloys, their properties vary widely. As technology improves, it is possible that counterfeiters develop more advanced fakes with properties that closely resemble gold and silver. This makes detecting them an ongoing challenge.

This is truly an endless war against fake silver and gold coins. We are actively identifying counterfeit coins that pass existing tests, improving our algorithms, and guiding users on additional measures to avoid being deceived.

You can access a list of known fake coins that pass the tests, along with instructions on how to identify and avoid them.

In our 3-star quest, you are invited to join this fight: identify false 3-star results, and earn rewards for your contributions. Together, we can enhance the detection and prevention of counterfeit coins.