They probably should have continued using the letters. The more things called ISIS the less important those letters are to any one thing, including the terrorist org.
The new £1 Coin
331–340 of 421 posts
Re: The new £1 Coin
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least for Euro coins (are these more difficult to fake?) it often happened to me that some vending machine accepted a coin only after multiple tries.
What might be fun to try is to use a Euro 5c coin in a machine that expects 20p sterling coins. Living on the border with Northern Ireland, we figured out when I was young that the sweet machines in Northern shopping centres could be conned like that.
The same trick worked with Australian $1 coins going into machines expecting NZ $2. imho having $1 larger than $2 isn't right.
Re: The new £1 Coin
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, what do you do with your counterfeit coins? You've invested all this money and effort in minting equipment, but it would look extremely weird to spend more than like 20 at once. Unless they can fool machines, it seems very inefficient.
My best bet, after mulling this over for a few minutes is that the fake coins are sold in bulk to people who handle lots of small change - kiosks, fast-food joints etc - then they just mix them in with the real money in the register for giving change.
What I want to know is why would you counterfeit (serious charge) when you can use a similar looking coin? For example
I was given a South African 5 Rand coin in my change in Amsterdam (should have been a €2 coin):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:5-za-rand.JPG
Broke a 20 getting intoxicated in a bar/coffeeshop, then bought a kebab after on my walk back. Kebab shop was only place I got metal change that night.
I didn't notice until the next day when a coffee place threw a fuss when I used it to pay for my espresso.
I suspect they often mix them in for drunk tourists.
Re: The new £1 Coin
#334Is it a curve of constant width like the 20p and 50p? If its sides are straight it cannot be. Also from wiki: > The new design is intended to make counterfeiting more difficult, via an undisclosed hidden security feature, called 'iSIS' (Integrated Secure Identification Systems). [1] Huh. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_pound_(British_coin)
> Is it a curve of constant width like the 20p and 50p? If its sides are straight it cannot be.
If I'm not mistaken it has to have an odd number of sides, but it has 12.
The sides looks like they might be very slightly curved in order to facilitate rolling. But it not being of constant width could still make life more difficult for vending machines etc.
Re: The new £1 Coin
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
It happens a lot around here (in New York, a few hours from the Canadian border) with Canadian coins. Obviously it's a bit different here, as the values are roughly the same, but I can see how that would happen as an honest mistake.
I find that in cities near the border, Canadian and US coins are interchangeable and usually accepted at par. In Toronto there are a fair amount of US coins in circulation, and I've never had an issue using them here. Helps that each of our coins are almost exactly the same size and weight for all common denominations.
The toll both machines don't accept them even though the coins are superficially quite similar.
Re: The new £1 Coin
#336> "Approximately one in thirty £1 coins in circulation is a counterfeit." That took me completely by surprise. Is there really that much of a market in counterfeit coins? The profit margins just seem so modest relative to counterfeit bills.
Due to the lower value the risk is also much lower, apart from vending machines who actually checks coins for fake and refuse them ? For a merchant the cost of annoying a potentially unaware customer is more than the value of the coin that he will probably simply give back to another customer as change. Try using an actual real 500€ bill anywhere else than Germany.
> Try using an actual real 500€ bill anywhere else than Germany.
I paid for a 17K CHF car with 17 notes once. The Swiss trust their money completely.
Re: The new £1 Coin
#337Is my business ready? Why wouldn't it?
Many reasons.
- You have vending machines which only take the old coins - You haven't sat down with your retail employees to make certain they can identify the security features of the new coins - You don't have sorting machines which can handle the new coins so that you can have an accurate inventory of your coinage - You don't have a policy in place for removing the old coins from circulation
Those are just off the top of my head.
Re: The new £1 Coin
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least for Euro coins (are these more difficult to fake?) it often happened to me that some vending machine accepted a coin only after multiple tries.
What might be fun to try is to use a Euro 5c coin in a machine that expects 20p sterling coins. Living on the border with Northern Ireland, we figured out when I was young that the sweet machines in Northern shopping centres could be conned like that.
The old (pre ~2005) New Zealand 50cent coin was a match for 5 franc coin in Switzerland (~5USD). I knew postgrads that would always stock up to use in vending machines, after finding that out I've always been curious to know how much research a mint does to prevent this from being possible.
Re: The new £1 Coin
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
This link first loaded the page, then unloaded it and put me in a queue! I was told how many people were ahead of me and an estimate on when I would get to read the page, complete with elevator music. Why would anyone even make that?
> Why would anyone even make that? Right? I thought the exact same thing. Seems like the time and effort and expense it takes to build a queueing system could be put into building a site that could handle infrequent heavy loads.
If you're using something like an F5 for your load balancer you can implement the queue there. Cheaper than provisioning hardware for occasional peaks and F5s can serve a lot of traffic.
Re: The new £1 Coin
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
So there was no point in doing it? This seems super weird for a financial institution that should be looking at hard data; maybe they did some analysis about the increasing ease of forgery?
Not sure if this is flawed, but I want to attempt an analogy that felt right to me.. Let's say they figured out catching a thief cost £500 and it became public knowledge the police wouldn't investigate any theft under £500. The cost of transitioning to the £1 seems worth it to prevent further abuse.
> Let's say they figured out catching a thief cost £500 and it became public knowledge the police wouldn't investigate any theft under £500.
Is this not already true? When my laptop was stolen, I was advised "don't bother reporting it to the police".