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ODD NEW £1 COIN: FAKE OR ERROR?The British public is having a close look at their new one pound coins; one of them turned out to be an oddball - is it a fake? -Editor
Genuine coin on left; discovery coin on right The new 12-sided piece only came into circulation last month, with manufacturer The Royal Mint branding it “forgery proof” and the world’s most secure coin. But one Brit, who has not been named, says he has stamped out claims that the new £1 coin is near-impossible to copy. Brow-raising pictures show the apparently-fake coin having subtle but significant differences to the real thing. The charity worker, from Addlestone, Surrey, described the discovery as “worrying”. It is heavier, the Queen's head is further to the left, the edge is more rounded, it doesn't have a hologram and there is no detail on the head of the thistle. The new coin is meant to feature a hologram at the bottom which shows a £ symbol and the number one depending on the light. He said: “If I've just found one, how many are there in circulation already? It's quite worrying. It's supposed to be the impossible coin." To read the complete article, see:
The World Mint News Blog published diagnostics on the coin. -Editor
 Composite illustration showing the most obvious errors on the counterfeit coin (top), compared to a real coin (bottom). (A) Position of the Queen’s portrait. (B) Lack of hologram. (C) Inaccurate lettering style. (D) Excessively rounded edges. (E) Gross lack of detail on outer ring. (F) Puffy, inaccurate lettering style. The finder also cited the reddish-gold color of the outer ring and the excess thickness of the coin. To read the complete article, see:
The Royal Mint responded to the first reports noting, rightly, that the anti-counterfeiting measures worked as planned - otherwise the odd coin would not have stuck out and been
noticed. But there's more to the story - Philip Mernick forwarded this follow-up article from The Telegraph. Thanks. -Editor
The Royal Mint, which initially declined to comment on reports of the find, now says it is "confident" the coin is not a counterfeit. An independent coin expert who examined images of the coin for The Telegraph believes these differences are the result of "mis-aligned printing" - the result of a malfunction in the striking process. Numismatist Dominic Chorney of coin dealer A.H. Baldwin & Sons, said the clue lay in the fact that multiple elements of the coin are out of alignment. "The coin appears to be a 'mis-strike', meaning it is a genuine coin which has become mis-aligned during the striking process," he said. Mr Chorney explained that the complexity of the hologram means the mis-alignment appears to have removed it altogether... Philip adds: This article is interesting not only for the fact that the reported forgery turns out to be a misstrike but also for the number of times they use “printed” rather than “minted” or “struck”! To read the complete article, see:
 Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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