A lot of "silver " dollars were forged in China and they are indistinguishable from the real ones except by weight. I even bought 11 of them from a guy about 80 years old (never figuring that he would have fakes) and two coin dealers told me they were all fake. I only paid about $100 for them and was curious if even though they were fake if they were still silver. One of the coin dealers told me that some of the fakes were actually made from silver. I took them to a local jewelry store, told him they were probably fake but I wanted him to test if they were silver or not. He insisted that they were real (he did not test them while I was there) and paid me $150. I was happy and he either made $3500 (the value of the coins if real) or got nothing.