It has been stated that 3% or more of £1 coinss are fake. These used to be easy to spot (lead ones) but the counterfitters have become more advanced and now they weigh right.
Last year PaddyPower the bookmakers was offering odds on the pound coin being recalled for a new design as that seems the most likely solution for the problem.
I do look at my change and haven't spotted many of them here in this part of the UK. I'm sure there are hot spots though - where they are "released" into the wild, so to speak.
I actually met a guy who claimed he knew someone producing fake £1 (this was just north of London) he had been in the dock and found not guilty for his part in the affair but he told me unnofficially that tens of thousands of them were produced and he was lucky that when he got raided by the policed he was lucky not to have any there having just offloaded 20k of them.
I only believe half what I hear, but some of these fakes are so good now that I often look at real ones and wonder if they are legitimate. The 2004-2007 pound coins I was particularly weary of since they don't have words printed on their edge and normally it is the quality of the edge inscription that is the give-away with fake £1's I think.
Yes the edge wording is very rough with this one, and the space between the denticles and the edge is very broad - much more so than a real coin, so it was easily spotted. The reverse is particually bad.
I'm sure someone somewhere is collecting these- to see what "varieties" are out there.
It is not particularly embarassing, £1 is still a relatively large denomination for a coin because despite the continuing efforts of our government to completely destroy the strength of the pound it is still pretty strong. When they introduced the £2 coin they made it bi-metallic so it is simply too difficult to make a counterfeit one that is anywhere close to the original. The £1 however is worth making a counterfeit of.
The notes are also rewarding to make forgeries of, hence regular updates of our notes using every available technique to make them difficult. You used to see occasional £20 forgeries but I think with the holographic strips etc they pretty much got on top of that problem.
In the UK it is an offence under s16 of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 just to possess fake £1 coins. Coins which are no longer current such as pre-decimal brass half-crowns dont appear to be mentioned.
I find it rather odd to make it illegal simply to possess counterfeits (but then as a collector of counterfeit American coinage, I guess I'm biased). :-)
Having some to study is a boon as education is the only way to beat them, and there is relatively so little information about them on the Internet. This is why guys like this are so important:
zvh0-I_W_ms
(He's sought out and researched thousands of them.)
Yes,though I think that law is aimed at those mass producing the things - I don't think anyone will get too hot and bothered about the man in the street having one in his pocket.
I would like to think that before prosecuting a collector for owning a few fake coins ( which he clearly has no intention of using to defraud anyone), a prosecuting lawyer would consider whether it is in the public interest and the "de minimis" rule. However, experience of small-minded public functionaries here in the UK has taught me otherwise.
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Posted 07/08/2012 10:54 am
