Fake £1 coins

[fat old seagull]

Just heard on the wireless that a chap has been caught with 19 million pieces of metal destined to be turned into fake £1 coins. Got me thinking. How on earth would you go about getting those into circulation? I know people probably buy loads of them on the black market, but how do they then circulate them? That is a hell of a lot of anything to get rid of. You can't just walk into a bank with loads of them and you'd be hard pushed to claim a win on the fruity with enough of them to make it worth your while. Obviously there's a way to do it but I'm baffled.

Well I can't imagine you could get rid of 19 million by wagering a handful on a non runner in several betting shops. Then collecting your returns hopefully in paper money. But I guess if you got busy you could shift a couple of hundred a day......but I guess it's probably easier to get a proper job.

 

[Diego Napier]

Crikey the Queen looks unamused in that one.

Yes and it looks like a profile from 30 years ago.

 

[fataddick]

I reckon it's much higher than the 1-in-33 is a fake claimed by the Royal Mint. Every time I use a Coinstar machine, roughly 10% of my pound coins get rejected, and the ones it spits out do look/feel wrong in retrospect. Shops will happily take them, even the self-service checkouts often do, fruit machines sometimes take them but usually not. Bizarrely the one thing that seems fussiest about taking fake pounds (refusing them full stop) is the sliding money trays on washing machines in the launderette - which on the surface of it, would seem to be the most basic (rather than most sophisticated) of cashing handling devices!

 

[bWize]

New one looks very similar to the Euro in design (apart from the shape obviously)

 

[mistahclarke]

Just heard on the wireless that a chap has been caught with 19 million pieces of metal destined to be turned into fake £1 coins. Got me thinking. How on earth would you go about getting those into circulation? I know people probably buy loads of them on the black market, but how do they then circulate them? That is a hell of a lot of anything to get rid of. You can't just walk into a bank with loads of them and you'd be hard pushed to claim a win on the fruity with enough of them to make it worth your while. Obviously there's a way to do it but I'm baffled.

In my teens when I was a bit of a lad, my friend and I used a hoover to suck out pound coins from the safe in the leg of a pool table.

We went to the pub and put them in the fruit machine, won a bit, then walked to the bar with the big pile and asked for notes. Got changed up easily enough despite the bits of fluff.

Incidentally, two 20ps worked in the pool table as a pound too.

 

[grubbyhands]

Ha. I've been forging 10 pence coins for years now by simply filing the corners off of 50 pence coins.

 

[vegster]

Just heard on the wireless that a chap has been caught with 19 million pieces of metal destined to be turned into fake £1 coins. Got me thinking. How on earth would you go about getting those into circulation? I know people probably buy loads of them on the black market, but how do they then circulate them? That is a hell of a lot of anything to get rid of. You can't just walk into a bank with loads of them and you'd be hard pushed to claim a win on the fruity with enough of them to make it worth your while. Obviously there's a way to do it but I'm baffled.

I would assume that if you are approached by someone in a pub offering you unused condoms, that might be your answer.

 

[symyjym]

I remember years ago that I heard that prisoners made 50p's by melting soldering iron into 50p moulds. I must hold my hands up to experimenting with this but buying the soldering iron was more expensive than what was needed to make the 50p. I guess in prison they would have stolen the soldering iron.

Disclaimer: I was about 14 years old at the time, wasn’t intending on going into mass production or to purchase anything with it, and my mould was rubbish anyway.

 

[Beach Hut]

Years ago when I dealt with TVMs I actually had to purchase a dodgy £10 note in a pub so we could calibrate the note acceptor to reject them !

 

[seagurn]

Surely it's easy. You just take your £19 million down the pier or to an amusement arcade and put each coin through the change machine, exchanging them for legitimate 20p and 10p coins.

Dont do it cctv !

 

[seagurn]

Surely it's easy. You just take your £19 million down the pier or to an amusement arcade and put each coin through the change machine, exchanging them for legitimate 20p and 10p coins.

Dont do it cctv !

 

[HastingsSeagull]

See quite a few at work that don't go in the £1 lockers

 

[MattBackHome]

Genuine question about counterfeit coins, and related to the.budget...

Are counterfeits necessarily a bad thing for the economy? The 2 main criticisms of QE are that its inflationary and the money doesn't get to those who need it. But surely counterfeiting is a way of getting more juice in the economy, whilst avoiding the main pitfalls?

I'm sure there are numerous flaws to this logic but I'm too tired to see what they are at the moment.

 

[FREDBINNEY]

Yeah, hard that on R2 a min ago. I remember when I worked in loss prevention/stock control in town and a guy came in with a fake £20 to pay for something. He claimed he was given it as change at the burger stand outside Churchill square. He went rather red when I pointed out that to get a £20 note as change for a £1,50 burger he would have had to try to pay for it with a £50, which is highly unlikely.

Why not just say you were a security guard ?

 

[dougdeep]

Genuine question about counterfeit coins, and related to the.budget...

Are counterfeits necessarily a bad thing for the economy? The 2 main criticisms of QE are that its inflationary and the money doesn't get to those who need it. But surely counterfeiting is a way of getting more juice in the economy, whilst avoiding the main pitfalls?

I'm sure there are numerous flaws to this logic but I'm too tired to see what they are at the moment.

Just think of it as the more money there is, the less it's worth. Say you borrowed £10 from ten different people and gave them all an IOU note. If someone forged another note you'd owe £110 so you'd be worth less than you were before.

 

[Pevenseagull]

I am aware of someone who's electricity ran off a meter that took 50ps. When the landlord came around to collect the money after a few months the cash book had one 50p and lots of water in it.

 

[MattBackHome]

Just think of it as the more money there is, the less it's worth. Say you borrowed £10 from ten different people and gave them all an IOU note. If someone forged another note you'd owe £110 so you'd be worth less than you were before.

Not if I could pass on the forged £10 as well as the other £100. I'd be completely square. Someone is only worse off when the forgery is unable to be used.

 

[dougdeep]

Not if I could pass on the forged £10 as well as the other £100. I'd be completely square. Someone is only worse off when the forgery is unable to be used.

I shan't bother in future.

 

[MattBackHome]

I shan't bother in future.

Genuinely not trying to be argumentative here - and I'm, sure you are right (following my argument to it's conclusion everyone could just print their own money and be done with it, which is obviously a load of bumguff) but I can't work out how the removal of a limited number of counterfeited coins will not dampen the economy.