Personalised 2011 £2 Coin

@ Ruby, thanks for posting!

I joined in a thread on the Numista forum where someone posted very good pics of another kind of fake £2, http://en.numista.com/forum/topic36392.html and I think you'll find that's effectively the same Queen's head you have but possibly the features e.g. hair are less compressed on the 'LANI' coin shown above.

There's also been a thread on the Moneysavingexpert forum about 6 months ago about a fake £2 with imitation Queen's head and invalid centre on the reverse, sounds like the correctly coloured, non-personalised type again.

RED, do you mean the new Britannia £2? I understand they are offering 2014 Kitcheners also. Note also that badly minted Kitcheners have shot to the top spot of most listed error £2 coins on ebay, ahead of "PEMEMBER PEMEMBER" etc and "TWO DOUNDS", but whether a significant proportion are fake I don't know.

The Coin-Mech co. have begun an on-line reporting form for fake £1/£2, to help detection of sources of these since often people don't want to forfeit them. http://www.coin-mech.co.uk/reportin...erfeits.html

I think this would be particularly helpful in the case of very new looking/novel kinds as discussed here.

Though it seems hard enough to get action taken if one has bought counterfeit defective goods in a local shop and the shop refuses to refund.

I've just had a brain-fart (Thanks Peter1234)

Could this be a mule of the 2011 Technology, and the (proving surprisingly difficult to track down) Fake MARY ROSE ?

The obverse wording position matches that of the Mary Rose, and the reeding matches that of the HMS Belfast & Magna Carta fakes I'm still having fun tracking.

BTW Serth... What happened to the coin ?

Do you have any pics Missy ?
I'd be interested in buying it, depending on how much you'd want.

Well I just bought a counterfeit Mary Rose for £6.99 so that's what I'll offer you, Missy.

(BTW Where in the country are you Missy, and same to you Ruby. Trying to find the epicentre here)

Another one has just turned up on a facebook group today, found in a bag from the BANK !!

I've had some thoughts on this coin actually.
First of all, the obverse doesn't seem to match the fake Mary Rose coins like I first thought...
see image below.

BUT what I just thought of is... it isn't cheap to have something like this made up, so either
as previously thought of, it's a 'show piece' which they've ended up selling cheap, as the dies were already made,
or maybe, just maybe it has been ordered to be given away at a WEDDING to all the attendees as a gift ! ?
(a post on The Royal Mint page asking where to get 2015 pennies to give away at a wedding inspired this idea)

Hi folks, first time on here. I've today also received a "I love you Lani" £2 coin. Exactly the same description as above, impecable quality. The detail on the front centre piece is spot on, sharp and clear. The reverse is the same. The only point of note is that it appears to be one solid piece of metal. Assuming Serth's neighbour still has their coin it appears the forger was more intent on winning Lani's affection than making fake coins!

So this was origin of that latest LANI pic?: https://mobile.twitter.com/N13KKF/s...863122214912

And Royal Mint's response shows here: http://websta.me/p/998729190290830733_265551612

@RED, that is certainly the Chinese Mary Rose obverse with bright background behind the camera/phone and a brighter light washing from the right. Try it!

Anyway, I firmly take back any suggestion of a connection between this portrait and one of the fake £1/bi-metallic £2 portraits. I wouldn't wish to smear the latter forgers over such an ugly effigy!

I wonder if it could be someone's attempt at a "legal" circulating token. "I LOVE U LANI" might have been chosen as something that looks relatively like "TWO POUNDS" with a quick glance. This way, the 'coins' do not technically claim to be 2 Pound coins, but could be passed on as such. Reminds me of Civil War or Hard Times Tokens from the US. Many would look just like the current cent, but the reverse would say "not ONE CENT", with the ONE CENT in noticeably bigger letters, to fool those taking a quick glance into thinking it really was a cent.

This 2015 non-personalised was recently sold by auction on ebay (reflections of a compact camera on the coin).



We can see:

1. A new obverse variant bearing the same text as on real IRB 'technological' obverse.

2. Reverse is modified from the LANI, such that

- inscriptions changed (obviously)

- defective cog at 10 o'clock has been mended (hat tip: RED)

- central 'zits' added to those solid cogs that were missing them

- outer network devices have been beefed up with bigger central nodes and arcs varying in thickness

- outer ring of dots missing. Presumably, in order to reset the type chars in the master collage they had to break the original ring of dots, but wouldn't leave it patched up as they 'don't do messy'.

And in any case it would soon be probably be redundant with future orders likely to favour Britannias and more commemoratives, without the central 'hologram' giveaway. Maybe also the outer network devices got damaged while breaking off the remaining dots, hence they were beefed up to cover over this damage somehow.

Looking closely at the date numerals relative to the features near them, it appears all were re-set versus on the LANI, with the possible exception of the zero.

The seller was in Swansea, and has also auctioned several HMS Belfast using pictures of one the fakes, and has at least several satisfied customers for these.

Nothing to say if the seller is connected to the local importer. This seller does not seem to list more than one of the same type simultaneously, but this may just be to avoid depressing prices.