Tuesday 4 June 2013

Funny money


Exhibit 'A'

When the above bank note was nestling in my pocket last night it was a tenner. When I walked in the pub, ordered my drink and proffered the note it was still a tenner. However, when the barman got his grubby little hands on it, it miraculously took on a new dimension: it was counterfeit. Fake. Moody, if you will. So how did that happen then? One minute you're extracting legal tender from a hole in the wall; next thing you know you've got a dirty big hole in your wallet where money once resided.

6 comments:

  1. I've never had a note refused, but pound coins on at least a couple of occasions. I must admit, when I looked at them they did seem funny. And since then I've had a few pound coins that were so crudely minted that I used them in vending machines to avoid the possibility of embarrassing challenges. Wouldn't have thought it was really worth forging coins though.

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  2. Cory Doctorow considered the profitability of pound coins recently:
    http://boingboing.net/2013/05/22/forging-1-coins-is-appa.html

    Sorry you've been had, Old Man.

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  3. That's such a pisser - and I'm so sorry to hear it. How on earth can you tell, though? (Was it the safety-pin through Queenie's lip that gave it away?)

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  4. Looks pretty legit too, even down to someone scribbling on it! Sorry you've been had fella. And yeah like Artog I've had my fair share of moody coins, which always go in vending machines or paying for parking spaces!

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  5. If I, or any of my staff, accepted a dud tenner while I was on my ten year stint with a well known coffee chain, it would take us over the company's allowable daily till variance and thus, another stick was created to beat us with. It's incredibly difficult to spot a good fake when you have a queue out of the door and, in order to give me and my guys one less headache from the suits, more than once I made up the difference from my own wallet.

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  6. Interestingly, the next day, to test the validity of the note, the GLW took it to the shop where she used to work and it was given a clean bill of health with the pen. Make of that what you will.

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