The secret £1 ultraviolet treasure hunt

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4359998/New-1-coin-guarded-QUEEN.html

New £1 coin is guarded by the QUEEN: Secret security codes embedded in the monarch’s face on the new currency make it ‘unforgeable’ 

• New £1 coin, now in circulation, billed by the Royal Mint as impossible to forge
• Queen's face on the coin contains invisible code used to prove its authenticity

How long before the message is revealed?  Perhaps the message is the BoE is making the pound worthless.  Vote Xmas?

[LiveinHope]

19 minutes ago, interestrateripoff said:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4359998/New-1-coin-guarded-QUEEN.html

New £1 coin is guarded by the QUEEN: Secret security codes embedded in the monarch’s face on the new currency make it ‘unforgeable’ 

• New £1 coin, now in circulation, billed by the Royal Mint as impossible to forge
• Queen's face on the coin contains invisible code used to prove its authenticity

How long before the message is revealed?  Perhaps the message is the BoE is making the pound worthless.  Vote Xmas?

 

Oh FFS, is this a frequency of ultraviolet light only available to the Royal Mint, I'll wait until I see it in The Sun

 

[dgul]

8 minutes ago, LiveinHope said:

 

Oh FFS, is this a frequency of ultraviolet light only available to the Royal Mint, I'll wait until I see it in The Sun

 

Hmm. While the sun does emit broad spectrum UV, quite a bit is absorbed in the atmosphere, so that ever so special frequency* used by the Royal Mint might not be present in sunlight.

*don't normal people say 'wavelength' when you get above THz?  I suppose this is the Daily Mail trying to educate its readers from its own low base.

[LiveinHope]

6 minutes ago, dgul said:

Hmm. While the sun does emit broad spectrum UV, quite a bit is absorbed in the atmosphere, so that ever so special frequency* used by the Royal Mint might not be present in sunlight.

*don't normal people say 'wavelength' when you get above THz?  I suppose this is the Daily Mail trying to educate its readers from its own low base.

crap pun if you have to explain it, Mail, Sun .....

[200p]

So the Royal Mint will recall all the coins at some future point in some sort of Census?

[Riedquat]

Nothing is impossible to forge. Some things are harder than others, but if one group or person can make something then so can someone else. And a secret security measure against forgeries is of precious little use in stopping forgeries when no-one else knows what it is so can use it to spot them.

[Captain Cavey]

Is it an image of her lizard tongue?

[man o' the year]

Surely someone is missing the point. The point of having a coin identifiable as a forgery is of benefit to the general populace using it so that they can reject any forgery. Having a "secret" measure is a waste of effort and money as it will not be used as a means to reject forgeries. Idiotic.

[interestrateripoff]

3 minutes ago, man o' the year said:

Surely someone is missing the point. The point of having a coin identifiable as a forgery is of benefit to the general populace using it so that they can reject any forgery. Having a "secret" measure is a waste of effort and money as it will not be used as a means to reject forgeries. Idiotic.

I presume they have used a different frequency to all the UV note chequers that are used.

[geezer466]

I think the general idea is to make it too expensive for the forgers to copy the coins so they won't bother.......

Still not seen one yet but the two colour thing is probably the biggest stumbling block for cheap copies. Any reports of the £2 coin being forged? They must have data now which made them go down this road.

[ChumpusRex]

The hair has a rather complex and intricate pattern, and Liz normally likes to keep it a bit more tidy.

I suspect that the ridges and valleys in the hair encode an obscure polynomial series of pseudorandom numbers, which are easy to verify if you know the polynomial, but look random if you don't. The pattern is intricate and complex, so that it is very difficult to copy exactly.

The use of a polynomial type pattern makes it straightforward for an industrial vision system to validate the correct pattern - so a copy which is hand copied, even if it looks the same to a normal glance, would be immediately obvious to an automated system. With the low cost of digital cameras, such a system could easily be employed in an automated coin acceptor. I believe that similar techniques are used in automatic note acceptors. 

[Sledgehead]

1 hour ago, geezer466 said:

I think the general idea is to make it too expensive for the forgers to copy the coins so they won't bother.......

Still not seen one yet but the two colour thing is probably the biggest stumbling block for cheap copies. Any reports of the £2 coin being forged? They must have data now which made them go down this road.

 

Two thoughts:

1 ) they tell us a good reason to move away from cash is cos it costs so much to make it : "yeah," as Bill Hicks once said, "thanks to you, you f***ers!"

2 ) they have printed billions and it's seen as a good thing, both to grease the wheels and to devalue the national debt.

So wtf is the reason for all this? So Tarquin can put his graphic design degree to good use, having failed to show aptitude for the banking shoes his father hoped he'd fill?

 

[StainlessSteelCat]

If it's anything like the previous pound forgeries, the barrier to acceptable by the populace is quite low i.e. lettering on milled edge poorly reproduced and often not centred, lack of detail on both faces etc. I think if people gave them any thought at all - they probably assumed they were worn. 

I guess the same will happen to the new pound. The secret security feature can only be to allow the mint/others to quickly sort coins into forged/not forged piles. 

[Neptune]

1 hour ago, StainlessSteelCat said:

If it's anything like the previous pound forgeries, the barrier to acceptable by the populace is quite low i.e. lettering on milled edge poorly reproduced and often not centred, lack of detail on both faces etc. I think if people gave them any thought at all - they probably assumed they were worn. 

I guess the same will happen to the new pound. The secret security feature can only be to allow the mint/others to quickly sort coins into forged/not forged piles. 

Did anyone ever care about the forged coins apart from the mint.  

Okay it s a bit annoying when the parking meter rejects your pound coin for the third time, but all you do is use another one and put the 'forged' one into your pocket knowing you'll  spend it in a shop later on.

[happy_renting]

18 minutes ago, Neptune said:

Did anyone ever care about the forged coins apart from the mint.  

Okay it s a bit annoying when the parking meter rejects your pound coin for the third time, but all you do is use another one and put the 'forged' one into your pocket knowing you'll  spend it in a shop later on.

Coin counterfeiting is democratised Quantitative Easing.

[oracle]

10 hours ago, Captain Cavey said:

Is it an image of her lizard tongue?

3d wrinkles?

[Riedquat]

11 hours ago, StainlessSteelCat said:

If it's anything like the previous pound forgeries, the barrier to acceptable by the populace is quite low i.e. lettering on milled edge poorly reproduced and often not centred, lack of detail on both faces etc. I think if people gave them any thought at all - they probably assumed they were worn. 

I guess the same will happen to the new pound. The secret security feature can only be to allow the mint/others to quickly sort coins into forged/not forged piles. 

If you just take your handful of change without looking closely at it even fairly poor forgeries will get through, and how many people will take the hit of losing it even if they do spot they've got one rather than just handing it on to someone else?

[tinker]

Remember once having a forged £20 (oblivious). It was just taken off me. Ouch!

[Hail the Tripod]

3 hours ago, Riedquat said:

If you just take your handful of change without looking closely at it even fairly poor forgeries will get through, and how many people will take the hit of losing it even if they do spot they've got one rather than just handing it on to someone else?

I quite often find (not even that similar) foreign coins that I've accepted as a 10p in amongst other change, let alone deliberate forgeries

[gilf]

15 hours ago, StainlessSteelCat said:

If it's anything like the previous pound forgeries, the barrier to acceptable by the populace is quite low i.e. lettering on milled edge poorly reproduced and often not centred, lack of detail on both faces etc. I think if people gave them any thought at all - they probably assumed they were worn. 

I guess the same will happen to the new pound. The secret security feature can only be to allow the mint/others to quickly sort coins into forged/not forged piles. 

Not wanting to get all mental or rant on about financial system, but money is rather arbitrary generally, a method to exchange one thing with another. Fake or real it doesn't matter to me, I've done X units of work which the person paying for has exchanged an agreed token of value for, I'm just passing that "effort token" to somebody else. If it's a real pound or fake it makes little difference to me so long as the next person along the line does the same.

If it were literally gold then that might be different, but the actual coin itself isn't of value, it's a representation of something. 

I'm not saying money forgey is acceptable, but it's not my problem if I can accept a token and give one without too much of an issue, which was the case with a fake £1 coin. If a shop gave me buttons as change that's fine if I can go back in and spend those buttons, already happening in parts of the UK (not buttons, but similar exchanges of units of work).