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The new £1 Coin

thenewpoundcoin.com

371–380 of 421 posts

Re: The new £1 Coin

#371

As a UK citizen, it stuns me that one-in-thirty pound coins is a fake because a) i can't imagine how it's possibly worth it b) out of the thousands of pound coins i must have handled, I've never spotted a fake - they must be very good. Still, the new coin certainly looks nice!

> i can't imagine how it's possibly worth it

Let's say you're one of three (or five) major creators/distributors of said coin. a third (or fifth, or whatever) of a thirtieth of all the pound coins in circulation doesn't seem worth it to you?

> As of March 2014 there were an estimated 1,553 million £1 coins in circulation

A fifth of that would be ~311 million pounds.

Let's say you're one of fifty or 500 counterfeiting rings, that's still £31 or £3.1 million. Even if the process for counterfeiting cost a million pounds to acquire (probably much less), it'd still be £1M pure profit. The numbers for both cost and slice of the pie probably scale down to a bunch of small-time counterfeiters, but the margin is definitely there.

Re: The new £1 Coin

#372

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 name of the spy agency in the cartoon Archer, the International Secret Intelligence Service, also fell victim to this.

Re: The new £1 Coin

#373

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 "terrorist org" never used those letters in the first place. The acronym in Arabic is "Daesh". ISIS is an English-language acronym formed from a (bad[1]) translation of the group's name. Think about it: why would a decidedly muslim organization name itself in a foreign language after a forgotten infidel goddess?

[1] Most western journalists rapidly moved off onto ISIL, which is a better translation (the name never referred to Syria the nation, but the geographical area better captured by "Levant"). Really only the right-wing sources continue to use "ISIS", presumably because it sounds more like a Bond villain's outfit.

Re: The new £1 Coin

#374
post #346

Earlier 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.

Where I grew up, in MA, canadian coins were accepted, generally. I'm in a city now and I've had people refuse to accept 2 dollar bills (which are rare, though absolutely legal tender).

Steve Wozniak's hilarious book of perforated $2 bills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ1TIYxm1vM

You can buy it here: http://www.moneypads.com/products.html

Re: The new £1 Coin

#375
post #373

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 "terrorist org" never used those letters in the first place. The acronym in Arabic is "Daesh". ISIS is an English-language acronym formed from a (bad[1]) translation of the group's name. Think about it: why would a decidedly muslim organization name itself in a foreign language after a forgotten infidel goddess? [1] Most western journalists rapidly moved off onto ISIL, which is a better translation (the name neve…

It is normal to translate acronyms. USA is EEUU in Spanish or EUA in Portuguese, for example.

I'm not contradicting you, just clarifying.

Re: The new £1 Coin

#376
post #373

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 "terrorist org" never used those letters in the first place. The acronym in Arabic is "Daesh". ISIS is an English-language acronym formed from a (bad[1]) translation of the group's name. Think about it: why would a decidedly muslim organization name itself in a foreign language after a forgotten infidel goddess? [1] Most western journalists rapidly moved off onto ISIL, which is a better translation (the name neve…

> ISIS is an English-language acronym formed from a (bad[1]) translation of the group's name.

Former name; they dropped the geographical modifier years ago, and it's just (translated) “the Islamic State” now.

Re: The new £1 Coin

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could have been a mistake. Some coins from New Zealand, for example, look a lot like British currency.

Likewise for the euro: the Thailand 10 baht coin (worth about 27 cents) is quite similar to 2 euro coin, similar enough that you actually have to look carefully to notice. Each euro country mints their own coins with different insignia, so people are used to 2 euro coins that what whatever figurehead.

That always piqued my interest as to how more easier Euro coins were to counterfeit given the numerous variations on coinheads.

Re: The new £1 Coin

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be even better had one received the money in question as change from such a machine...

I was standing in front of two vending machines the other day: one for food, one for drink, and all I had was a $5 bill. I wanted food, but the food machine would only take $1s and coins. On the other hand, the drink machine took $5s. So I put my money in the drink machine and hit the coin return. Nothing happened. I tried a few times and figured the coin return was broken or that it was out of coins. The only thing…

The food machine accepted coins and $1 bills, but not $1 coins or other bills? It almost sounds intentionally designed to be as difficult to use as possible. (I realize the $1 coin is larger and newer, and accepting larger denomination bills would mean dispensing more change, but still.)
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