Star Trek Rumor

[lfcrule1972]

Yet there are twats here in the UK who have been making forgeries of our ?1 coins for ages now. They take lead, press it between two dies and then spray it gold with car paint from a can !!

[dbminter]

Ah, but, do your vending machines take these fakes? Here, faking $1 coins isn't viable because 1.) not many people use them 2.) not many vending machines take the old or the new ones

[lfcrule1972]

Nope they are only accepted in small change here - the vending machines weigh the coins and being lead they weigh far more.....

[Groundrush]

I still have in my possession a fake ?20 which a so called "MATE" fobbed off on me in a pub one night, I'm showing my age, that was 20 years ago. It was the worst counterfeit ever, and i was the biggest dick for taking it..... you live and learn.

[Pain_Man]

You guys have a $20 bill?

 

 

, Mike Meyers is on our $50.

 

 

An improvement over the psychedlic colored bills with Bess II on them.

[Pain_Man]

Aw come on db, no need to bring our government into this............. Yes , a loonie and a twoonie. Heard a rumour there was going to be a fifty cent piece called a weenie.............

 

 

Minty's not bringing any gov't into it. You do (or did) have a coin called the "Looney" because there's loon stamped on the obverse.

 

My grandmother brought me one after a trip to Vancouver. Nice coin.

[Pain_Man]

I keep hoping they'll drop the paper $5, and replace it with a coin. I think Weird Al was talking about our old $5. I see the US paper money now has some colour, not just the plain green on all bills of old. Always had trouble with their money, I tipped a $10 bill in a coffee shop down in Idaho once, dropped it in the tip jar thinking it was a $1. Was too embaressed to pull it out.

 

 

In a typically stupid move of the Carter Administration, the Shah of Iran was allowed to buy the 20 ton-per sq. inch presses we use to print our money. The presses are unique and have never before or after been sold to another government.

 

When the Murderin' Mullah's overthrew the democratic revolution that toppled the Shah they found themselves possessed of the means of creating undetectable counterfeit American currency.

 

So these bubbleheads decide they are going to destroy our economy by printing hundred dollar bills by the ton. Which they proceeded to do. The fake bills were so good that the Treasury Dept could NOT tell the difference!

 

They just left them in circulation (since the dollar is the world currency, it's not surprising that 2/3rds of our currency is outside the US) since they couldn't be told from the genuine article.

 

This farcical attempt by the boneheads in Tehran finally prodded Congress into ordering the Treasury Department to do something about our ridiculously easy to counterfeit money.

 

Which they did.

 

Ten years after the fact.

 

So now our bills sport some of the features that Canadian and European, among others, have long had: water marks, color as well as some high-tech stuff. The bills still aren't as counterfeit proof as they should be, but they are a lot better than the previous ones.

Edited April 26, 2006 by Pain_Man

[Pain_Man]

I do foresee a problem with the American trend of changing the bills every 2 or 3 years or so to stop counterfeiting. There will be so many different versions of bills that it will actually be EASIER to pass off fakes as real. The cashiers will have too many variants to look out for. And, after all, most cashiers are too stupid to be working the registers anyway! I had some teenager at a grocery store call up her manager because of my golden dollars. Like I'd somehow get rich counterfeiting ones! Let alone HOW could I make a profit counterfeiting COINS?! Like I've some kind of damn metal mine, cutting torches, dies, etc. in my basement?!

 

 

Actually, once you've been handling cash for a while, you develop a feel for what is and what isn't a real bill. Bank tellers find nearly all counterfeit bills by touch.

 

And while its easier to counterfeit than some other nations, it's not as simple as using a laserjet printer (which has been tried by certain bubbleheads).

 

First, the money's not printed on paper, but a mixture of cotton and linen. The ink is also of a very special kind. It's also moved in heavily guarded convoys with as much security as nuclear warheads.

 

While a counterfeit bill might be successfully passed at a liquor store or a fast food joint, it will almost certainly be caught by a bank.

 

And, finallly, most counterfeit money is used in illegal transactions, e.g. buying dope or guns, etc. Not too many counterfeiters are good enough to walk into a bank with $9000 of phoney twenties and succeed in getting real hundreds or fifties for them.

 

And counterfeiters also tend to be stupid, even good ones. E.g. creating fake bills that bear the same serial numbers, putting the wrong background on the bill.

 

Besides, counterfeiters almost always go for the big bills--which are most watched for--rather than the smaller denominations which aren't. I bought gas with a $50 bill one time and the guy wrote my license plate number on the bill (!).

 

I'm sure it won't be that long before they figure out how to put tiny chips in bills--just like you can implanted in your dog.

[Pain_Man]

@ dbminter...talking of counterfeiting, i was given a $2 bill by my G/F's grandmother last time i was in the USA. I'm still unsure as to whether it is legal tender or is someone trying to wind me up...?

 

 

 

They periodically do a run of $2 bills. Because of their relative rarity, they are prized by collectors. I've had a number of the years but money, imo, is for spending. Not for looking at.

 

When I working as a courier at a bank, somebody brought in a thousand dollar bill (all American currency printed since 1789 is legal tender--excepting only Confederate money--FOREVER) and cashed it. One of the tellers actually bought it. Just to have the silly thing. Thousand dollar bills are cool, sure. TO SPEND. Or save. But just to look at?

 

Please! It's loses value by the year. So, as a collector's item, it's a dumb move.

 

Speaking of coins, back in 1999 or 2000, they tried a $1 coin. It didn't last long. I haven't seen any in several years.

 

Americans, for whatever reason, don't like coins. When I was in France as an exchange student, at the end of my visit I had more 10 franc coins than I knew what to do with. Carrying them around is a pain in the ass. So I sold them to my exchange "mother."

 

Believe or not, you canNOT exchange coins at money exchange houses! Just bills. I find that odd. But I tried to do it at the Swiss border and, got non for a response.

[Pain_Man]

Yet there are twats here in the UK who have been making forgeries of our ?1 coins for ages now. They take lead, press it between two dies and then spray it gold with car paint from a can !!

 

 

Hey, crule, they still cut your nuts off for counterfeiting over there?

 

That used to be the penalty for counterfeiting and coin clipping. If you got caught it was YOU that got clipped.

 

Coins are as worthless as the paper money, i.e. have no instrinsic value.

 

Our pennies are zinc now because the price of copper makes them worth more than a cent!

 

Nickels are made of copper because nickel's waaaay to expensive.

 

Quarters are made out of silver-coated copper because the weight of silver's worth more than face value of the coin.

 

Oddly enough, the Mint still issues solid silver dollars!

 

 

 

As for Minty's basement....I shudder to think about what's down there.

 

Probably a warp core. A gun mount from the Millennium Falcon and several hobbits chained to walls as slaves.

Edited April 26, 2006 by Pain_Man

[lfcrule1972]

I used to work at a bank when I first left school and you're quite right, you get a feel for the cotton feel of notes and paper forgeries are easy to feel out.

 

We also had scales to weigh money in and out, the bloody clever buggers could tell if the bags of coins contained fakes or foreign coins and you were then told to open the bag to check, they could also pick out a fake note in a bundle and the cashier would then have to manually count them and thus spot the fake that way. As said above the only way to pass fake money is in shops etc.

[dbminter]

The only really valuable $2 bills are the Star Note series. But, any starred serial bill have a value in the future because of what they are: replacements for an error at the mint. Since minting errors are rare, the star noted series depict that an error did occur in that serial's run. (The star in the serial just means it was a reprint for a bill. To keep the serial numbers and runs straight, a star is added to make a unique identifier AND not have to worry about missing serial numbers.) Since $2's aren't printed and demand doesn't look like any will be for some time, starred $2's can only go up in value. Because of the rarity of errors at the mint, even starred $1 bills have an inherent collector's value. I don't know if I still have that starred $1 bill my father gave me. I kept it for a while, I know, but, I am not sure whether I eventually spent it. If I did, I regret it because I didn't know that even relatively new, small bills with stars generally go up in value because of what they mean.

[dbminter]

Let's face it... if ANYONE has a right to have a press in their basement, it's a Minter!

[dbminter]

I still have in my possession a fake ?20 which a so called "MATE" fobbed off on me in a pub one night, I'm showing my age, that was 20 years ago. It was the worst counterfeit ever, and i was the biggest dick for taking it..... you live and learn.

You should have known Arthur Treacher is NOT on ANY Pound note in the history of Earth Prime.

[volvofl10]

talking of "queer" currency notes, im sure Lfc said something to me about he's into 9 bob notes and is trying to make a large dollection of them

[lfcrule1972]

You're confusing my life with your camp life again volvo !!

[dbminter]

talking of "queer" currency notes, im sure Lfc said something to me about he's into 9 bob notes and is trying to make a large dollection of them

 

 

Isn't dollection the term for the way Daleks speak? You know: "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"

 

 

[Groundrush]

I still have in my possession a fake ?20 which a so called "MATE" fobbed off on me in a pub one night, I'm showing my age, that was 20 years ago. It was the worst counterfeit ever, and i was the biggest dick for taking it..... you live and learn.

You should have known Arthur Treacher is NOT on ANY Pound note in the history of Earth Prime.

 

 

=))

[Grain]

I wish I had a money press...

[Pain_Man]

I still have in my possession a fake ?20 which a so called "MATE" fobbed off on me in a pub one night, I'm showing my age, that was 20 years ago. It was the worst counterfeit ever, and i was the biggest dick for taking it..... you live and learn.

 

 

Well "dick" is not the right word--'cept for your "mate."

 

I suspect the bar was dark and you were drunk and your "buddy" took advantage of both those facts.

 

 

Got a better story than that:

 

One of my best friends (of 23 yrs, since the second semester of 7th grade; no idea what the Brit equiv of that is, were about 12) looks a lot like his brother (who's older by four years).

 

One day my friend's at work when his mother calls him, "The Secret Service is coming to see you."

 

My friend, Tony, was thinking, "What the hell?"

 

The agents showed up and asked him if he'd been in La Jolla (about a 30 min from where he was in San Diego County) a couple of hours before and passed a fake $50 bill.

 

Fortunately, my friend had been at work since 7AM and had 50+ witnesses to prove it. (One of those days you're glad you didn't ditch work to loaf on the couch!)

 

Turned out his wonderful brother had swiped his driver's license and used it to pass the fake $50.

 

Tony told the secret service this (of course, he'd missed his driver's license and knowing his brother it was pretty obviously where it was).

 

The Secret Service (which investigates counterfeiting in the US) never did catch up with his brother...(however, he later spent 8 years in prison for attempted murder; a real, genuine thug).

 

But think about it! Your brother does something that could have easily landed you five years in Federal prison!

 

But his brother was always doing that kind of shit. When I was 14, he tried to get me to cash a stolen check for him at the liquor store up the street (which I visited all the time!). Sure, dude, sure.

 

The problem was, his brother was (and is) faaar to tough to "teach a lesson to." In fact, he'd break you in half and laugh at your cooling corpse.

 

Many guys like to brag about how tough they are when they're really just blowhards (sometimes literally).

 

Tony's brother's the real deal. He worked for the Hell's Angels as an enforcer. So he pretty much always got to do what he wanted. And when he was in the joint, he ran the place.

Edited April 28, 2006 by Pain_Man

[Grain]

Saw it on another site, a Borg smilie! We need one here, who's the resident smilie man?