by Kathy Kristof
CBS News
As investors become increasingly nervous about the stock market, the price of gold has been swinging up, rising roughly 20 percent since just the beginning of the year. But if you buy your gold in coin form, you need to be wary. Chinese crooks are minting fakes in large quantities and selling them on the Internet.
And unlike the fakes of yesteryear, which were often made of precious metals but altered to appear more rare, many of today’s fakes are coins that are commonly sold for their precious metal content. But these are constructed of cheap alloys like tungsten, lead and zinc, with just enough gold to give them color.