This topic never seems to go away. It is always apropos as the eBay market evolves, and Ted has done a terrific job helping and exposing the ins and outs of it to the eBay community over it for a long time.
I'll weigh in on it here:
Greed has destroyed whatever beauty and legitimacy that Miao (and Tibetan) silver design and craftmanship once had. About 20 years and more ago, traditional Miao Silver comprised of 60 % silver (Tibetan, 30 % respectively). Analysis of currently available Miao and Tibetan silver items show actual silver percentages closer to 1 % or less, in many cases (XRF scans of scratched cores) with the balance being a whole host of other metals, including some nasty heavy metal ones like arsenic, cadmium and especially lead -- which the US Federal Government has restricted in Miao silver (jewelry, in case of the Consumer Products Safety Commission statute back around 2010 or so) to a maximum lead content of 600 ppm for safety reasons (after the death of a child who ingested a small Miao jewelry charm and the autopsy's toxicology report revealed the lead as the source of the cause of death). Today, in 2017, the maximum permissible amount of lead has been reduced further - to as low as 100 ppm for children's toys.
https://www.cpsc.gov/Business--Manufacturing/Business-Education/Lead/Total-Lead-Content
With Miao "silver" coins, there are no Federal lead restrictions, and hence, lead content (and other known carcinogens & toxic metals) would and often are of tested examples to be much greater than 600 ppm. I could cite metal composition tests of "Miao" coins here, but won't burden the reader any more.
Furthermore, with the price of silver having gone up considerably since 2000, and as one would expect, if the price of the Miao (or Tibetan) silver items didn't rise correspondingly in price, then it would have to be debased further than the traditional alloy in order to be profitable at the same lowly price. Experience on eBay has shown this hasn't been the case. While eBay's total number of sellers offering Miao silver has increased, the quantity of silver percentage in the items has commensurately gone down as competition has driven the price of the item(s) down. EBay prices for Miao silver coins and jewelry are far below what one would expect. For instance, an example would be a US silver dollar sized unmarked forgery or replica coin that should weigh about 26.7 grams to approximate the authentic. If it were comprised of 60 % Miao silver, it would lead one to believe there are about 16 grams or about 1/2 troy oz of pure silver in it. At today's spot prices this would mean it would have to be priced at about $ 8.00 before factoring in the labor, profit and other soft costs a seller has to bear ($ 4.00 if Tibetan). Most all of these "coins" can be obtained on eBay for a couple of dollars each at most (including free shipping). Experience has also demonstrated that many of the silver dollar sized forgery and replica coins don't come close in weight of the authentic with most settling somewhere in the 22 to 25+ gram range with even some going as high as 28 grams!
It is my belief that there is possibly a Chinese conspiracy to destroy the credibility of Miao and Tibetan ethnic culture by destroying the livelihood of their life - silversmithing. Many sellers of these items ship their wares, not from the ethnic Miao provinces in China and Tibet where these minorities have traditionally resided, but from the mainland's major cities and Hong Kong. Correspondingly, there could just be a bunch of "bad apple" sellers that are nothing more than locally known sleazebags who have found eBay as a vehicle to monetize their nefarious wares on the unsuspecting, but I don't think the locals are sophisticated enough to use online selling, especially if it is as easy as a previous poster mentioned to take these items to a US military base and risk-free sell them to unsuspecting military personnel. I may be wrong as perhaps "Miao" and "Tibetan" silver sellers are part of an organized criminal network of wholesaler middlemen who buy these items up from local craftspeople with no say in the matter or no knowledge that "Miao" is used in their promotion, or who dictate what forgeries they want them to produce for a ready wholesale market of eager Chinese scaming middlemen who will buy based on demand coming from the eBay market. Whatever is happening, the hypocritical Chinese Government, at central and provincial levels, is clearly turning a blind-eye to it, and hence, is intentionally destroying the cultural heritage of a number of minorities.
I expect this is not the end of the topic...
