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0 pointschippy9y ago0 comments

From my other comment above:

We know 1 in 30 £1 coins are counterfeit.

Take the amount of £1 coins in circulation. Sum the value. Divide by 30. Equals the market in counterfeit coins.

From http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/circulation-coin-... £1 are 1,671.328 £m / 30 = 55.71 £m

The market in counterfeit coins is therefore over 55 million pounds. This is, however the cumulative, total value of the market and not per year.

0 comments

Already__Taken9y ago

I was curious how much the penny costs to mint as to put your number into context. Only to find the Royal Mint won't release per coin detail since they mint other coins not for the UK it's classed as a commercial secret. Which means for all the effort put into our currency we might actually be turning a profit on the capability.

ref: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/costs_per_unit_of_min...

refurb9y ago

That doesn't really answer the question though. Is all the effort to create a fake 1 GBP coin worth it? Unless you have access to the right equipment, I can't imagine it is based on the effort to make each coin.

If you can make 8x1 GBP coins a hour, then you clear a cool 64 GBP each day. Better than nothing (and tax free!), but there are a lot of jobs that pay better than that.

falsedan9y ago

Well yeah, you'd buy a stamping press and mint 10k/day.

I fear HN underestimates the amount of work people will do to avoid getting a boring (legal) job.

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