Sometime around 1982 I bought a 1909-P $10 Indian at a local coin show in New Jersey. About 10 years later I was buying type coins for my US collection and I showed the coin to a major dealer: Clark A. Samuelson of US Coins. I bought quite a few coins from Clark and he told me that my $10 Indian was definitely an Omega counterfeit. Clark passed away since then and I don't have the 1981 dealer contact. I've looked at some posts others have made about counterfeit $10 golds and looked at mine again.
It has some characteristics of a good coin. It has 46 stars on the edge (correct for the 1907-1911 issues), the edge design was applied with 3 partitions (also correct) breaking at 6:00, 10:00, 2:00 (measured from the reverse), or 12:00, 4:00, 8:00 (obv). The weight according to a very good analytical balance (ohaus) was 16.754g although I think the balance is a little hi & needs calibration. The correct weight is 16.718g although .001 gram accuracy is difficult to get even with the wind shield.
Poor photographs follow. I took at least 15 photos with a Sony NEX6, set to manual focus (auto-focus is hopeless) to get these but I can do better as I also have a photo camera mount. These were done by hand.
A diagnostic of the Omega counterfeits is an Omega symbol in one of the letters of "Liberty" often the "R". This coin has something there but even looking at it with a German 9X hastings triplet I can't pick out any Omega symbol. Also every slabbed 1909 Indian in 63 or 64 grades I looked at from HA had "not a completely clear field" inside the R of Liberty: similar to mine.
So is this an Omega counterfeit? Is it a regular counterfeit? In answer to the obvious, yes I do have "a few" $10 golds unslabbed, some bought from Stack's auctions back in the 80's before anyone heard of slabbing coins. Others were bought at coin shops in the NE back in the days. If interested I can try to get better photos of this 1909 Indian $10.
