[xoxoxoBruce]

From About.com, comes this story about Chinese factories specializing in fake coins of various nations.
They make fake, uh, cough "replica" cough, bills and ancient artifacts, too, but coins are the big item.

This is a closer photo of the coin press in the previous image. Several freshly struck fake Morgan Dollars lie to the right of the machine. They look like they might even be Proof Morgans, which would almost certainly be struck on a machine that uses hand-fed coin blanks, but some of the machinery in this operation looks pretty old so maybe they're just normal Morgans after all. Whatever quality of striking they have, whether it be Proof or normal, one thing is certain: they're FAKE!

Here's a close-up image of a few freshly-minted fake Morgan Dollars struck in China. I don't know if they were struck by the coin press on the previous page, or one of the several other coin presses this counterfeiting ring has, but those fake Morgans sure look to be pretty high-quality counterfeits. Of course, this counterfeiting ring will process them so that each one appears to have a different amount of wear, toning, contact marks, and other minor imperfections so that they don't all look too much alike. Some of these fake Morgan Dollars will also find their way into counterfeit PCGS and NGC slabs, but my sources tell me that most of the fakes these counterfeiters sell are sold "raw" (rather than slabbed.)

This photo, provided to me by the Chinese coin counterfeiting ring, shows coins that have been put in slabs, or coin holders that have a grade on them. It's kind of amusing to see notations like "AU 55 Details - Cleaned," as if the coin is a genuine About Uncirculated 55-graded coin that has been damaged by cleaning, rather than the outright fake that it is! Unfortunately, such dissembling really fools people because I have argued many times with people who refuse to believe that counterfeiters would go to the trouble to make a fake coin and then degrade its value by damaging it. The counterfeiters know that the damage makes the coins more acceptable to many people because it allays suspicion about the authenticity of the coin in these people's minds.

This photo shows one of the showrooms for the counterfeiting ring. This is a little like a store, where customers can come in and buy smaller bulk quantities of the fake coins and other items made by this operation.

There are 24 captioned pictures at the link.
If the deal sounds to good to be true... it is.