Okay, maybe not on purpose. But today I found myself in the posession of two Brazillian 5 centavo coins. They bear a strong resemblance to the US nickel. Purely as a scientific experiment, I went down to the vending machines to see if they could tell the difference. I fully expected the imposter to be shot out of the coin return slot, but to my amazement I was given 5¢ credit! After inserting the balance of legal US coinage to retrieve my Twizlers®, and affixing a note to the front of the machine promising to compensate the vending machine company for the 5 cents I cheated it out of ;), I went back to my desk to examine the one brazillian coin that still remained in my posession.
It turns out that, while very similar in color & diameter, the imposter coin is noticeably thinner than a genuine US nickel. From this I can only conclude that the coin thickness detector (or whatever) in the vending machine had dozed off as I was making my purchase.
But this made me think, what would happen if some foreign nation began minting coins that were almost physically identical to ours? That is, close enough that vending machines would be fooled & most consumers would accept them along with a handfull of change. Would this be the same as counterfeiting? How could it be proved? Surely it would not be the stated intent of the foreign government to bring immitation nickels into the US, but just as surely many of them would find their way in.
Currently, brazillian centavos are trading at nearly US 2.5¢ if I have done my arithmatic correctly. But suppose that some country with a 1000:1 exchange rate (or worse) were to begin minting a coin with a very low local value. By some extraordinary coincidence, the physical characteristics of that coin made it look very very similar to, say, the US dime. As far as a vending machine could tell, they were in fact identical. Only upon close human inspection would it be obvious that the portrait was that of Ho Chi Minh and not FDR.
And what’s that- why, it doesn’t say “LIBERTY” at all, it says “ÜßERTY”! And what the hell does “Indigo wet rust” mean??
All of a sudden the US is overrun with cheap, metal discs (cash value=1/1000¢), while the foreign governemt is swimming in a sea of US coins which made it into the country in the pockets of hyperopic tourists.
Would it work? What would our official response be?
Hmmm, you know, Canadian nickels look an awful lot like US nickels. And Canadian dimes look a lot like US dimes. And Canadian quarters look a lot like US quarters. And Canadian pennies look a lot like US pennies. I often receive these as change as well. Hmmm…looks like this scenario has already come to pass.
If a vending machine can tell Canadian coins from US coins (some can’t, but many can these days), then you’d think they’d be able to make it be able to reject other similar-to-US foreign coins. If it had trouble, then they would probably work on improving the technology.
Actually, I’ve heard of people putting old Mexican pesos (the ones that were worth almost nothing and about the size of a US quarter) into vending machines. They’ve revalued the peso since then, so while they might not be worth as much as a quarter, they are at least worth more than US$0.01. I don’t think that the new pesos resemble quarters anymore, either (I don’t know). I have no idea if this was done at the request of the United States government, or if it had anything to do with the vending machine lobby.
This is a big problem in Japan too, there’s some Korean coin that is almost worthless, it is a dead ringer for a more valuable Japanese coin. I forget the exact coins involved as it’s been a long time since I read about this.
Actually, they don’t use thickness anymore, they use mass and electromagnetic “signature.”
I read an interesting article last year about the development of the new “golden” US dollar coin, and the effort involved in finding an alloy that had the same electromagnetic properties and mass as the old SB Anthony dollar coin. (I think the article was linked from Robot Wisdom but I’m not at all sure and far too lazy to go research it.)
As a child, the Video Arcades all used Mexican centavos (or some denomination) instead of quarters. That way, you could buy (at times) 20 tokens for $1.00 (normally it was about 5-6 tokens for a buck).
Despite the revaluation of the Mexican currency some 10 years back or so, the Mexican peso is still not worth all that much. The exchange rate is about 9.5 pesos per 1 dollar right now. The Mexican 1 peso coin (no paper, smallest paper is 20 pesos) is actually more like a dime in size, but doesn’t resemble one at all. It looks more like a Canadian Looney (CA$1). Maybe they ought to be the ones to worry?
The Mexican 10-centavo piece REALLY looks like a dime, except for the size (which is an obvious giveaway). As an American in Mexico, they’re pretty much worthless coins, worth, well, a hair more than a penny.
I remember in about 1985 taking UK 5p pieces to Germany as they were exactly the same size as the German Mark. Throw in the NAAFI prices and vending machines so the underage cadets can get beer and hey presto, 5p for a bottle of Grolsch…
This happens a lot in Commonwealth countries, many of which have coins of the same size and composition. In Australia, we receive New Zealand money in our change so often as for it to be unofficially accepted in many places. Most shopkeepers won’t bat an eyelid at kiwi coin.
Absolutely false. Whenever a coin becomes more expensive to produce than its face value, the mint follows one of two actions: Stop minting it, or mint a cheaper version of it. In 1982, the U.S. Mint stopped minting copper cents and switched over to copper-plated zinc, saving itself millions every year. Fast-forward to 20 years later, the copper-plated zinc cent is costing 4/5 of a cent to produce, and they’re faced with stopping production altogether. Basically the same thing happened around the world between the '40s and ‘60s, when every mint in existence stopped minting silver coins for circulation (the Brits in 1947, the Americans in 1965*, the Canadians in 1968). The Canadian Mint, for instance, makes about 90 cents’ profit per dollar coin struck. The reason counterfeiters do not (often) go for coins is simply that it’s much easier to counterfeit a $100 banknote than 100 dollar coins or 400 quarters or . . ., i.e., it’s an economy of scale thing.
*The U.S. Mint left some silver content in the half-dollar from 1965 to 1970, but these coins didn’t circulate much.
The Japanese coin in question is the 500 yen coin, worth over $4. The Korean 500 won coin is almost identical in size and slightly heavier, so people started drilling holes to make them lighter and using them in Japanese vending machines. For this reason they recently introduced a new version of the 500 yen coin - identical size and weight, but with additional counterfait prevention measures. They have different electrical resistance than the Korean coins, and this difference is measured by the new vending machines. (I have no idea how they deal with dirty coins)
This process has been very annoying. For a while none of the vending machines would accept the old 500-yen coins because of the counterfait risk, and they weren’t set up to accept the new ones either. One that accept the new coins are finally starting to appear.
By the way, Attrayant, if you had turned the “coin return” lever on the vending machine you might have gotten the Brazillian coin back. Vending machines are usually set up to return the exact coin you put in, rather than a different but same-value coin, for this exact reason (i.e. so people can’t use them to exchange fake coins for real ones without buying anything).
I don’t think this is true, I’ve sometimes put in a handfull of small change and gotten back quarters in return. This is especially true of machines that accept paper money.
My worst experience was when I put in a dollar bill, noticed my soda brand was out, and hit the refund button. I was issued a refund in dimes. Nine dimes.
Cuba mints nickels, dimes and quarters, same dimensions as the US but different engraved motifs. They are fractions of US dollars and redeemable as such. I have a few right here on my desk.
If machines cannot read the engraving they can only go by dimensions, weight and magnetic properties. You have a very limited range in these properties so coins of the world are bound to resemble each other and could pass for each other.
I have known people who would keep certain coins from one country to put into parking meters or vending machines of another but the incidence of this is negligible.
If a person wants to make money by traveling to Brazil and bringing tons of coins back to the USA I doubt this would be profitable. I doubt it would even pay for the flight and on top of that, done in big scale and with intent to defraud you would get into trouble.
Come on, there are things you can bring legally and which are more profitable.
It is actually an older trick than that. I once read in a book (a short story by Frans G. Bengtson [Swedish author, 1894-1949?], probably “Litteratörer och militärer”) about how the Duke of Wellington in his spanish campaign (in the napoleonic wars) had some of his soldiers, with dubious backgrounds, make coins out of the silver they had ‘found’. That way he managed to pay for most of the campaign, since the war office was unimpressed with his bookkeeping and didn’t like paying for his expensive war.
Wasn’t trying to suggest that this is something I could get rich doing. I was aiming at something closer to hafnium’s Operation Bernhardt, without actually being in the midst of a war. I was wondering, in a “what if” sort of way, what would happen if some foreign government started a counterfeiting operation in an effort to subvert the US economy. I realize that the economy is stronger than a few coins, but with enough visiors & tourists coming into our borders every year this could lend new meaning to the phrase “being nickeled & dimed to death”.
Clearly this would have to be some country that we are on good enough terms with that a large number of its citizens are coming into the US on a reagular basis (in order to flood us with their “cheap metal discs” and take home an equal number of “real” nickels/dimes/whatever).
