51–60 of 421 posts
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!
> "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.
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!
http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit-one-p...
> "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.
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.
> "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.
If no one's checking for counterfeit coins, and the users themselves don't know they exist, it sounds like a pretty awesome opportunity for the counterfeiters.
Just take a look at the number of comments here saying the same thing as you - from a counterfeiter's perspective, it sounds pretty ideal.
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've never spotted a fake - they must be very good Some regions seem to get more than others, I used to see large numbers in the change I got in London. The quickest "tell" for me is the lettering on the edge. Some of it is shockingly poor quality and almost looks like someone took a soldering iron to draw it on. The next time a machine rejects one of your pound coins, take another look at it, there's a good chance…
Those coins just look like they've been battered a bit too much, I just assume lots of coins get really rough treatment.
Funnily, the new "most secure" pound will be introduced one day before a pretty big event, Mrs. May's Article 50 invocation, which widely predicted to devalue the pound significantly. You might buy new pounds as "secure" coins, but you'll probably some percentage of their value the next day...
From all the big ForEx investors who will only learn about Brexit when they read in the papers that it has happened?
On one hand finally getting clarity might be good news in that some people who have held back might spend more once the uncertainty of the immediate reaction is out of the way. On the other hand for a lot of people it makes things definite and will cause more cautious spending patterns, and there's still plenty of other uncertainty.
It also starts the clock, which will make people speculate about the timing.
I haven't the faintest clue how that will make traders respond. What I do know is that because I don't have the faintest clue how it will make people respond, I'm acting accordingly cautiously, and have cut my spending considerably since the referendum, and I know many others in the same situation, and indeed the UK has a whole has seen consumer debt levels drop substantially.
All this to say that it is foolish to assume that it boils down to whether or not the actual event itself is expected or not.
> Hidden high security feature – a high security feature is built into the coin to protect it from counterfeiting in the future. "security through obscurity" as a feature?
For example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends:
> For external-facing servers, reconfigure service banners not to report the server and OS type and version, if possible
http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublic...