Fake £1

Dutch counterfeiting ring's £30m swindle behind decision to replace £1 coin

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...9210251.html

This image taken from "Italian con artists caught with fake pound coins in Dover are jailed" http://www.kentnews.co.uk/news/ital...ed_1_3228684. Earlier coverage reported that these coins had been smuggled from Amsterdam.

Only Bridge series coins appear in this image. There is one Bridge series that fits the bill perfectly. See user RED's gallery for Bridges coins that tick 3/4 boxes but are wrong weight. If I am recognizing these correctly, they are very slightly thinner than genuine, have distinct rounded cusps to the edges and a much grainier surface than a genuine £1 still of the same hue. Those, together with the Royal Mint-like fidelity of the faces, are diagnostic features. They often have errors particularly in the edge engraving as well as die cracks and Cuds, and are generally shinier (less oxidised) than usual for the years concerned, but any of the latter could occur in a genuine coin. Also the dots around the faces tend to hit the rim circle, which is thinner than normal because of the rounded cusps.

I have only ever found them with Bridge designs, matching date and edge engraving, nothing else that seemed to be from the same source.

This series may be mostly to blame for the resurgence in fake incidence between 2012 and 2013 surveys i.e. several million being imported in the meantime. However 30 million, even over several years, seems preposterously high if they also suspected in 2007 that the Enfield man then jailed made at least the blanks for 14 million, and considering what sort of numbers should be attributed to all the other large and medium scale series out there.

Awesome ! I was shocked they got 10 months , could it be due to the small number of coins they had on them and passed ?

Its funny you ask that because I first thought maybe it was one but on checking it didnt have the mirror like surface or the frosted like look which ruled out a proof ....

Thanks for the link , its an interesting article and its very risqué to suggest that people stick suspected fakes into a machine to test for them after they had just stated what the law says.....

The bits that I liked were :



.. but seriously, if they had offered to re-reimburse people for fakes found the number of really bad fakes would plummet to almost zero then banks and cash centers would be left free to filter out the harder to spot ones .....but having said that I found the numbers of fakes seized & those estimated to have been produced staggering

and this was also interesting to read =>

Well done Rob ! They are really getting hard to get and that one you got looks like it could pass a first glance especially were you got it

Ive been finding fakes left right and centre at work. Flicked through the till the other day and found 6!! I come across a few most shifts I've never properly looked until the last month or so but they are fairly common