Fake One Pound coins

A couple of years ago, I found such a comically bad fake £1 in my pocket that I got interested in seeing if I could find some more. In fact, I found several over the next few months, and was quite surprised by how many were apparently in circulation. At the time, the Bank of England really weren't saying much about the scale of the problem.

The story is now getting a bit more attention, with the suggestion that about 2% of the currently circulating one pound coins are fakes. With the current economic conditions in 2009, this percentage is only going to go up.

It turns out to be an offence to pass a counterfeit coin, even if you are ignorant that it is counterfeit, so it is worth keeping a lookout and refusing to accept fakes. I've found people often get a bit shirty if you refuse a fake in your change, so be ready for that response...

Once you start looking at the pound in your pocket in some detail, rather than just as a small gold-coloured thing you buy stuff with, it's actually extremely easy to spot most fakes. The dead giveaways are:

• The vertical milling on the edge being uneven, or missing.
• The motto or pattern on the edge being poorly stamped.
• Poor definition of the features on each face.
• Surprisingly frequently, the wrong date on the back, for the pattern on the front, or the wrong motto for the design.

I've seen it claimed that another thing to look for is the Queen's head being misaligned with the pattern on the front (they should be in the same orientation). Well, all of my fakes, even the lousiest one, are correctly lined up, so make of that what you will.

The full list of designs and years can be found on the Royal Mint Website. I think that the large variety of coin designs actually helps the forgers, because people expect to have lots of different types in their pocket, and the gross differences tend to mask the subtle differences in the fakes.

And now for some examples. Sorry these photos don't show the edges, which is the first place you should look for clues, but they're a bit tricky to photograph.

Working from the left:

1. Funny colour, poor definition, interlinked stamped pattern on the edge is missing.
2. This is quite a good one. You can see there's a missing dot just above the G on the "Head" side, and the motto is a little bit out of kilter, and it's generally not quite sharp enough.
3. This is extremely good and very sharp on both faces, but let down by the motto stamping, which is very faint. It might even be a low quality real one in fact.
4. Dated 1997, so should have Three lions on the front... The motto isn't great, and it's lower definition than normal.

Working from the left:

1. Slightly poor definition, the milling is not crisp, and the motto is "DECUS ET TUTAMEN", but on a Welsh design, which should have the Welsh motto.
2. Poor definition, the date is 1995, so the face should be the Welsh dragon, not the Celtic cross. The edge milling and the motto is actually quite good on this one.
3. Poor definition, the front isn't stamped centrally, the edle milling isn't crisp enough, and the motto is not sharp. And being a 2001 coin, it should be the Celtic cross, not Three lions !
4. The faces are quite good, and it has the less common Flax design. The giveaway with this one is the motto stamping on the edge, which is faint, and wrongly positioned.