UK Government to Re-design £1 Coins "Baww Green Queen Eyes!"

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Looking at this topic, I'm surprised that the redesign caused a bit of a fuss.

 

I figured the whole point in redesigning currency was always done to stay ahead of counterfeiting money was common knowledge. That's always the first thing to come to mind when making these changes in the first place, because counterfeit money is a big problem worth fighting.

[Detective Shadzter]

The fakes certainly seem to fool the general public and other shop workers. When I have to refuse a fake pound coin the customers are always surprised and usually tell me they've just got it from another store. I always make sure to show them what makes it a fake and how to identify them. Some are so badly stamped it immediately looks like a plastic toy coin, while others you can flip and find the Queen's head is incorrectly upside down.

[Mogtaki]

The queen looks like she has gills.

 

Guess it's time to start collecting 'old' pound coins.

[JezMM]

Whoa that new design is pretty show-stealing, though back when the £2 coin was introduced I thought the same and that's just become normal now.

[Gabz Girl]

*post*

 

Wow, I didn't know fake coins were so common. Nobody has ever stopped me in store to tell me a coin was fake.

 

But maybe that's why the Coin Star machine at my local Sainsbury's wouldn't accept some of my coins sometimes. And one time, it was a pound coin.

[Salamander]

So the new design is based on one phased out over forty years ago... the Tories trying to drag us back into the past again, eh?  While I accept the necessity of a redesign, and it sounds like there'll be time enough to replace all the devices that use the old coins, I'm sure Osborne relished the chance to stamp his mark on society.

 

Is the new coin the same size as the old one? If so, it's possible that a typical vending machine would accept it anyway depending on the weight; sides and all. It's not too hard to trick vending machines that take quarters in America into taking stuff that isn't remotely similar in design simply by getting something that is the same size when put in the machine.

 

Hmm.  Do the counterfeits also work in cash machines and the like?  Obviously there'll be no sneaking a counterfeit of the old design past a cashier (except perhaps an extremely ill-informed one), but assuming the forgeries were intended to work on cash machines and similar devices as well, presumably they could also take the place of the new £1 coins if the new are the same size and weight as the old.

[Jin.]

I doubt the Queen has much longer to live, honestly.

Also, in Belgium we recently changed our €5 bill to a newer one. 

[MamboCat]

Hmm, kind of reminds me of the Euro coin.

 

Didn't I hear that plastic notes are also being introduced? Sounds like some major money overhaulage going on over there!

[Kevin]

First thought when I saw the design "Reminds me of the Euro coin".
 

As someone who works in a supermarket, I can tell you this is VERY welcome news. The counterfeits have slowly become more and more of a problem over the last several years. When I was working at Sainsbury's about 5 years ago, customers would unknowingly give them to me about once a month and in the last year at the Co-op Food store I work at I've been getting them once, sometimes twice, a week. It's a BIG problem. I've seen so many that I've now got an eye for the fakes and can identify them as soon as they're handed to me.

Huh, I find it interesting that it's become a problem because like Gabz, I've never had any coins refused when I was in the UK. How often have you've identified a coin as being a fake?

[Detective Shadzter]

The fake £1 coins seem to be spreading like wildfire now. I had four, yes FOUR, different people try to give me a fake £1 coin at work today. Checked them all over and they were definitely fake, so I had to refuse them. Unfortunately, in the first case, the young woman's item cost £1, so she gave me the coin and left before I even got a decent look at it. 

 

First thought when I saw the design "Reminds me of the Euro coin".
 

Huh, I find it interesting that it's become a problem because like Gabz, I've never had any coins refused when I was in the UK. How often have you've identified a coin as being a fake?

Usually I get one, maybe two in a week. You might not get them refused because most retail staff will just glimpse your coins, see the gold coloured coin and just accept it as a pound coin straight away without thinking about it. Retailers only train staff in testing notes. I only know about the fake pound coins because I read reports about them circulating in the news several years ago and researched how to check if you've got a fake. Now it seems they've become such a problem that they're having to make a new pound coin.

[Phos]

Well, I guess think about it this way: Would it really be practical to never change the pound coin?  

So the new design is based on one phased out over forty years ago... the Tories trying to drag us back into the past again, eh?  While I accept the necessity of a redesign, and it sounds like there'll be time enough to replace all the devices that use the old coins, I'm sure Osborne relished the chance to stamp his mark on society.

 

 

Hmm.  Do the counterfeits also work in cash machines and the like?  Obviously there'll be no sneaking a counterfeit of the old design past a cashier (except perhaps an extremely ill-informed one), but assuming the forgeries were intended to work on cash machines and similar devices as well, presumably they could also take the place of the new £1 coins if the new are the same size and weight as the old.

ATMs typically don't count the money themselves from my understanding, the deposit is put in an envelope and gets counted elsewhere by a person or more advanced machine.  

 

When it comes to more typical coin slots, the mechanism usually just bounces the coin off a few pendulum like things that basically just test its size and weight.  Newer coin acceptors typically come out all in one piece pretty simply, for sake of being replaceable, so if the place that made the machine is still around updating should be pretty easy.  This ironically means that more recent emplacements will be easier to deal with.  

 

I am lamenting that the new pound coin is losing the old pound coin's legendary spiral wishing well compatability.  Such a thick coin with so small a face, it just wants to roll.  

[Unknownlight]

I just realized that the Canadian toonie is just an inverted 2 pound coin. 

 

Speaking of Canadian money, what's all this stuff about the old coins no longer being legal tender? Canada literally replaces all the money in circulation every few years or so just for the hell of it (I've lived through three eras, myself: the Birds of Canada, the Journey Series, and the Frontier Series); each time all the previous money is still considered legal tender, now and forever. Just two years ago they replaced the one dollar and two dollar coins with new stuff that didn't work in old vending machines—it only took a few weeks before everything was fixed. (Sure, Canadian businesses are probably more prepared for sudden changes in banknotes and coins since it happens all the damn time, but it's still not that big of a deal.)