Bogus Hatter

[butlersrangers]

Recently, I have been viewing, on a daily basis, a Facebook site titled, ".30-40 Krag The Great American Rifle".
It is a nice group with some interesting Krag content and a lot of questions from Krag novices.

Facebook has a lot of advertisers and popups. One that caught my eye was for a supposed hat company selling 1902 Campaign hats.
The hat photos are gorgeous, but 'Rengars Hat Company' is a fraud. The whole thing is a Chinese scam.

The attractive bogus advertisement appears right next to the "Great American Rifle" content. The scammers are clearly targeting Krag enthusiasts!

Nice hat pictures, but it's a lie. This company just cheats people.

Damn Chinese, sure know how to seduce us. They take your Charge Card money and you get nothing or maybe a Halloween Hat!

[Dick Hosmer]

MY pet peeve is the coin scammers, again Chinese. As an investment sideline, I happen to "collect" (well it's more like hoarding) Morgan Dollars. Started back in 1965 when the silver was removed from US coinage. Those were the golden days - when you could find them, the banks were only too happy to get rid of them. I must have at least 50 which I acquired at $1 apiece. Back then, and until maybe 5 years ago, when you came across one you usually didn't have to worry about id being genuine. Now, the market is being flooded with with pot-metal fakes from you know who, which means that private transactions will become extremely risky as the supply gets polluted.

When we had our antique store, I was occasionally able to buy some 'junk silver' (pre-64 circulated US coins) including the odd dollar. I would pay full price for the silver content (which a coin dealer wouldn't) figuring to make my gain, if any, on the numismatic value. So far, I'm ahead.

The modern fakes LOOK pretty good - the best way to tell is by weight - well, that and if the deal is too good to be true, it almost certainly isn't.

[butlersrangers]

I did not know about the fake 'pot metal' silver dollars. One would think that was a Federal crime and the Treasury Department would be all over it!
(BTW - Wasn't George Floyd apprehended for passing some counterfeit money)?

But, then if I was in charge, internet communications and telemarketing would be cleaned up by a powerful F.C.C. and the American People would be protected from 'scammers'. Or ... would that just open the door for another rouge Federal Agency?

Back in 1962 or 1963, I was with my Dad, on a Saturday morning, when he picked up 25 Morgan dollars at the local bank for a neighbor couple's 25th anniversary.
The 'uncirculated' Morgans were from 1903 or 1904 and were minted in New Orleans.
On the following Monday, I told school pals about the Morgan dollars and we went to the school library and looked them up in a coin book.
At that time they were rare and worth about $27 dollars apiece in that condition.

Following school, we jogged over to the bank, but the teller told us that the (bag of) Morgan dollars were all gone.
Oh ...crap!
My parents alerted the neighbor couple, that there was added value to the $25 gift, but I don't know if they took advantage of the collector value?

[Dick Hosmer]

An interesting point, which I'd not considered, probably since NOBODY spends a silver dollar, or ANY silver coin, at face value these days - but, technically it certainly IS counterfeiting. I don't know how much attention the gubmint pays to Facebook - the #$@%^%$#$&^% woke "fact-checkers" (really bed-wetting masturbators living in their parent's basements) are bad enough . . .

[King carp]

Those fake silver dollars have been around for a long time. I was told they originally came out of latvia. Leave it to the chinese to copy something. They are usually in a plastic case that is hard to open and not easy to weigh. Of coarse if you accidentally drop one on a hard surface it will not "ring" like silver. It seems like anything that is collectable is faked. When you start just ripping people off by not even having a fake in stock is even worse. The innerweb is wrought with this kind of garbage. CAVEAT EMPTOR.

[butlersrangers]

To protect Life, Liberty, and Property (or the pursuit of happiness) is why our government was instituted.

We better get to work!

The quality of life is getting kind of sucky for many Americans.

.... and even the savvy consumer can be easily duped on the internet!

[Culpeper]

To protect Life, Liberty, and Property (or the pursuit of happiness) is why our government was instituted.

We constituted (verb) a new government in '87 because we used a constitution to create the seecond goverment of the union

Instituing a government would put us in an institution. Hmmm. Now that I think about it it would appear the congress and the other branches are filled with the insane. So. Yes. We are in a mental institution and the crazies are running the asylum

And I'm not happy about that.