Is this a genuine or a counterfeit 1990 UK one pound coin KM #941 ?
And what about this one?
And here are both of them side by side (one is a fake, but without comparison to the genuine one, we couldn't spot the difference 'on the street')
A friend came across this coin yesterday, and it was only because it was consistently rejected by a slot machine with a known to be sophisticated fake detection system that we spotted it. Visual examination by three different people, myself included couldn't see anything wrong with it, until I compared it with a genuine 1990 pound!
The giveaway is the poorly defined inscription around the rim, this shows up far better in a scan than it does in real life! The alignment of the fake is also slightly out, but this is almost impossible to spot with the naked eye.
It's a pretty damned fine counterfeit though, and goes to show the quality that some of these fakes are - and this is just a circulating one pound coin, not a rare old coin!
Matt
