There was a story on the BBC about pound coins, specificially, fake ones. According to some sources which cannot be mentioned – there is now 30 million fake £1 coins in Britain. Basically, one in every 50 is fake.
There are calls to take them in, redesign them, and redistribute them, like they did with the South African 5 Rand coin. However, can I make a suggestion as a bloke?
Can we switch back to a £1 note please?
I fucking hate coins. I usually have a lot of change on me. The pound coins are the worst, as my little pouch in my wallet for coins is hardly sufficient. Usually I stuff it in, but my wallet looks huge. I also hate putting them in my pocket, particularly the back one, as if I sit down then it’d hurt my bottom. America – and their note based monetary system – has the right idea, wallet’s are designed to hold more notes than coins, why should our monetary system go the other way?
Furthermore, it’d completely stop me putting money in slot machines too.
The other thing is that it seems a lot harder to counterfeit notes than coins, I wonder how many counterfeit fivers there are there. Probably not 30 million.
What do you think? Do you think a popular denomination such as a pound should be in note, or coin form?
Comments: 5 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
I find it quite amusing that there are so many coins that are fake in circulation to be honest. And as for the change issue.. i hate putting coins in my wallet but quite happy to have them in a front pocket. I am one of those annoying people that walks along jangling their change thou
Im not a big fan of notes – visiting ameria it just became annoying having so many $1 bills!! Bring in a moneyless system where by you just swipe a card for everything.. the talk of your mobile wallet is interesting.. think that will take off – or at least hope it does!
bring in a system where by you have to scan your phone/card and verify with a fingerprint – would be great! definately hard to forge that
We actually still have pound notes over here in the Isle of Man… first time I got one in my change I thought someone was taking the proverbial!
Guy’s got a good point, although I’m a firm believer in 3-point identification and authentication for payment systems – I don’t think chip and pin is anywhere near secure enough. Ideally I’d like it to be along the lines of:
- something you know (PIN number)
- something you have (swipe / proximity card)
- something you are (fingerprint / iris recognition)
Fail on any of these, and the transaction is rejected
Since that article, me and a guy in work have come across £34 in fake coins while counting the tills. Makes me wonder how much fake money comes into the shop on a weekly basis.
Fake fivers are more common than you think, but it’s the £20 notes that take the biscuit. Some idiot accepted a £20 the other week that had a graph paper border on one side, obviously they didn’t line up quite right in the scanning/printing side of forgery. How she didn’t notice this I don’t know because it was printed on standard A4 paper quailty.
Why do you not just put everything on a debit card instead of carrying cash? I rarely have more than £5 in my purse in cash…it’s too much of a hassle having actual money.
since the bbc published an article about the amount of fake pounds that are being made i have become an addict so to speek i am always checking my change and i’ve recentily been studying the amount of fakes that we recive in our store but most times the managers turn a blind eye it’s this that shocks me we can recive upto £10 to £20 pound in fake coins a week but i’m only counting one check out if i study all of them and over a week i’d hate to find out how many the managers are actully turning a blind eye to. i agree with the comment melissa left the quality of the fake notes are getting worse we to have recived £ 20 and £10 in fake notes and most of the quality are poor one we got when you held it up the holograme you are ment to see was drawn and the line was just a thin pencil line when you started to rub the note the two bit of paper were simply glued together if the notes get thourgh like that then anything can.
They need to make the pound coins with two metals, like they do the 2 pound ones, only smaller. The type of metal they use for the one pound coins is too soft and too easily obtained by crooks. The two pound, 50p, 20p, 10p, 5p, 2p, and 1p coins are all made of some sort of harder alloy and don’t wear out as easily. The imprints are crisp and clear. Because of the qualities of the metal in the the pound coins, even the real ones get all worn out and hard to read, thus making them look fake as well. I recently got a fake pound coin and I spotted it immediately, but I could see how those who are not coin buffs could be easily dooped. Even the old shilling and florin coins held up better than the modern pound coins do. Time for a re-design I think as it’s been almost 30 years since their introduction.