Has anybody got experience of fake notes? & are they hard to spot? abouts 10 yrs ago I was scammed with £100+ worth of 20's. only by looking close up that I could see the printing was not pin sharp or embossed. there was the silver strip too. I imagine todays fakes are even better.
Now I have a detector pen & light.
The hurdle that most fake notes fall it is that they don't _feel_ like money. You know when you put your hand in your pocket - money feels a certain way because it's printed on fabric, not on paper. Also, if you've a keen nose and the note is relatively new, BoE notes smell a particular way. Also, there are all those odd jagged geometric lines which are relatively hard to reproduce on lesser quality printing kit and are often blurred smudged or slightly misaligned. And lastly, fake notes nearly always deteriorate faster than genuine ones so pay close attention to notes that look "more knackered than they should" if you follow. For instance if the colour looks good and the note is falling apart, think "Why does that look so knackered? What happened to it?".
A while ago I had someone give me a fake fiver which was so good I didn't notice at first. It was one of the very last old-style fivers. The the colour balance was a _little_ vivid but even amongst a load of genuine fivers you would never, ever spot it. The forgers knew they were good and put an easter egg in the note!! The dark green "£5" was a very deliberately vivid turquoise, just because they knew they could get away with it. The note was _so good_ I took it to Natwest who _insisted_ it was genuine. I mean they argued with me. So I got it changed for genuine fiver (should have done that first) then I pointed out the turquoise £5. "Oh.", he said
Incidentally, a large portion of the UK's £1 coins are forged, and there are a few fake 50 pence pieces about too.
To spot a fake £1 coin you need to look at the machining around the side and the quality of the text. Genuine BoE coins are done in a variety of fonts, a couple of which are particularly popular with forgers due to their being easier to "stamp" without smudging. There are a number of other give away factors but 99/100 fakes have dodgy machining and embossing on the side. Also, a lot of them have a slightly odd texture to them but it's only something you'd notice if you are constantly handling £1 coins and someone hands you one that's a bit over-smooth. Oh yeah and the fake one's also tend to make an odd noise when u drop them. Because of the need to stamp the coin, the metal is softer than on a genuine coin and it makes a different thud when u drop it.
-EDIT- Here's a pic of a poor(ish) forgery compared to a real coin. Notice how the font is too "square" as well as plain crap. Also note that the machining of the vertical lines is poor and does not extend all the way to the edge of the coin. It's not clear from the picture but the fake is also a too "gold" or "rich" in colour. The genuine ones are blonde not gold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fake-and-real.jpg
Regarding 50 pence piece, they are next to impossible to spot because they are a much simpler coin with no tricky details. However, a lot of them have too much Iron in them and start to corrode (rust) heavily with age, so beware of rusty 50p pieces, hehe.
Hope this helps someone not get fobbed off
