THE NOVEMBER ISSUE OF COIN NEWS IS NOW ON SALE! Coin News, Britain's biggest-selling magazine, incorporating Banknote News, is now available from newsagents, from our website www.tokenpublishing.com or from the Token Publishing office.
News-Antique.com - Oct 16,2008 - Articles in the magazine this month:
Coin moulds found in Herts
Looking at a colossal find
Faustina Junior
Spotlighting the "mother of the camps"
Hoard of Henry III
The not so common pennies of Shrewsbury
A unique Russian gold 20 roubles
The Grand-Duke's rarity comes up for sale
The coinage of 1882
Examining the issues of an enigmatic year
The Halsall penny
The first token of the Industrial revolution
On the job
David Knight of the Royal Mint
A magical life
Stephen Fenton's rise to the top of the numismatic profession
All that glisters
The materials that make up our coinage
Art and papermoney
Gathering a miniture art gallery
The Irish Lady Lavery
Examimning a papermoney icon
How I started to collect coins
Runner up entry in the Junior Essay competition
Regular Features:
Editor's Comment
Coin news & views
Around the World
New issues coin update
Royal Mint Bulletin
Market Scene
Price Guide to £5 and £2
The Lexicon
Coin Classroom
Spotlight on the Sovereign
Banknote News
New issues banknote update
Price Guide - Lady Lavey notes
Bookshelf
Letters to the Editor
Coin clinic
Dealers' lists
Fair diary
Auction diary
Societies diary
Semi-display adverts
The Web Page
Classified advertising
Advertisers' Index
Coin News
November 2008
Volume 45 No. 11
For Sale: A Russian Legend
What have we got in our pockets?
COINS were in the news again recently and once again our “media tart” Phil was called upon to deliver a number of radio interviews and quotes for newspapers. But this time the story wasn’t new designs or record prices but rather something from the darker side of our hobby. It seems, according to the Royal Mint’s own figures, that 1 in 50 of the £1 coins circulating today are forgeries, and whilst 2 per cent might not seem a huge sum, it equates to some £30 million and that’s big money in anyone’s language!
The broadcasters and National media all homed in on this story and suddenly everyone wanted to know how to spot a forgery and what to do if you found one. Well, anyone even vaguely interested in coins will know that spotting one of these fakes is actually relatively easy: they are almost always of a vastly inferior quality in both metal and striking to the real ones; the colour is always suspect and will often rub off easily if scratched with another coin and invariably they have obvious errors like edge inscriptions that don’t match the reverse design, the wrong reverse (and in some cases obverse) for the date and the die axis being so off that the two sides are often at 90 degrees or more to each other. What to do about them is another matter—officially it’s against the law to knowingly hold a forgery and certainly illegal to pass one on. What you should do is pass it to the police, who will in turn pass it to the banks. Unfortunately you will be £1 out of pocket and, let’s face it,
