Nonsense. You said you had never heard of people trying to pass off novelty money as real money. I provided cites. So now you’re arguing that none of those cites identified this particular brand of novelty money. There’s no reason to assume this particular brand is somehow immune to this. You’re nitpicking over a ridiculous point and you’re refusing to back down and admit you’re wrong.
A good point. Here’s a bundle of “Canadian” training money. If you were a cashier in an American store that accepted Canadian money, you might ask about the Chinese characters on the money. But if I said “Oh yeah, they issued those last year as a special commemorative for Chinese heritage in Canada.” there’s a good chance you’d believe me.
I think you should re-read what I wrote. I said that I find your claim that they are being used that way to be dubious without any cite because i can’t find any report of such, anywhere. I even said that if anything, the attempts would at least show up in ‘stupidest criminal’ type news stories. You responded by showing me 3 ‘stupidest criminal’ type stories where people had tried to pass of various kinds of novelty money as being real. I guess you didn’t extrapolate from my statement that I was already aware there are numerous such stories, and my whole point is that one of them would be about Bank of China training notes if any such thing had ever happened before.
The “cites” you provided are just supporting my statement. If anyone had used these notes in attempts to pass them off as being real money, it would certainly have gotten coverage - much like the unrelated stories you cite got coverage.
I’m also not saying this particular brand is immune to anything. I’m saying that as far as we can tell there has never been anyone caught trying to pass them off as real, and as such, any statement claiming as a fact that they have been, would be pure speculation, not a GQ factual answer. And even if there was any such case, ever, even that wouldn’t be evidence that the sellers of these things have that in mind in making them available.
You make a ridiculous claim, that this is the big 800 pound gorilla in the room, and yet can’t produce any factual evidence of anything other than “well, some other people did something that could have been done with this money, even though it wasn’t as far as I know…” - that isn’t GQ quality material, sorry if you are offended by my pointing it out.
Hundred dollar bills get too much scrutiny. I saw/handled a bad twenty taken at a bar on a busy night. It looked real, but was too thick and the texture was way off. But on a busy night in a dark bar, it passed.
Great for strip clubs.
I think if you’re working in a store that regularly accepts Canadian currency, you’re probably reasonably familiar with the feel of it and would notice this doesn’t feel right. So you’d either use one of those counterfeit detecting pens or machines.
Not to mention the Bank of Canada makes high resolution images of all Canadian currency available online to anyone. So we could just as easily worry about *that *800 lb. gorilla. Since some stupid person could print these images on regular paper and try to pass them off as real currency, the Bank of Canada must be involved in some kind of mysterious international counterfeiting scam.
Or, maybe they just know that such a threat is practically nil and there are a lot of legitimate reasons people may want to use images of the currency.
As you note about them not feeling right, the key in Canada and the rest of the world, since the first money that was ever invented, is what it is printed on. The substrate as they say in the money printing business. These days Canada uses a special polymer substrate that is practically impossible to counterfeit.
While looking up a phrase I didn’t understand, I was amused to find that “a suitcase” is a colloquial term for 100,000 rupees
I highly doubt Quentin Tarantino is going on Ebay to buy stage money for a film.
So I bought some on this stuff (it was only 8 bucks). While it doesn’t exactly feel like real U.S. C notes, it sure looks like it. The printing is very detailed and clear. The ink is identical. Put a wide enough band on the end with the Chinese writing (it’s only on the one side) and it looks like a stack of 10 grand. Now put a bunch of these under some real notes in a suitcase and you could have a con going. Or not.
The main thing I’d like to point out is that there are over 1000 auctions for this stuff. I can’t believe there are that many people with legit reasons to buy it.
Like pulling pranks:
My daughter gave me a new leather wallet for Fathers Day. Guess what I did with some of these bills and my old wallet? Bwahaha! You should have saw the look on the face of the guy in the restaurant that picked it up from the floor and immediately shoved it in his pocket. I would have loved to have seen his face when he got out of there and found those bills hanging out of it were fake. Serves him right for being dishonest! 
Would this count at “passing counterfeit currency”? Could you be cited for anything if the other guy had been caught passing the notes and claimed that you ‘gave’ them to him?
I highly doubt pkbites left any identification in his old wallet with the intent of it being picked up and taken.
I doubt it. Pkbites didn’t give the “money” to the man in exchange for anything or give it as a gift or do anything else that presented the fake money as if it was genuine. He didn’t intentionally pass the fake money to the man. And apparently mere possession of this fake money isn’t a crime.
How hard would it be to pass this money as real? I guess it would depend on how bright the clerk was, I guess..
Why are the Chinese training with* US banknotes?*
So they can more easily spot the Chinese-made counterfeits.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the coverage of real-life events by the media. It happens virtually every day somewhere that some person - not necessarily a particularly smart one - tries to pass off a poorly counterfeit banknote (either a novelty item such as these, or a homemade one) for real. Sometimes they are successful because victims don’t look closely enough, sometimes they’re unsuccessful. But not every single of these incidents gets media coverage. The most recent statistics that I could find right now indicate that in 2011, $261 million in counterfeit dollars were removed from circulation. On the basis of these figures, it seems fair to assume that each year, there are at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of incidents where someone passes off, or attempts to pass off, a fake banknote for real. You certainly don’t hear about every single of these incidents; the media make a selection. And I hardly believe you hear about every single incident where the money in question was a novelty item. And besides, we’ve seen cites that novelty money has been used for this purpose. Why, exactly, should this type of novelty money, specifically, be immune from such attempts?
That could, in fact, be a large-scale legitimate use for these banknotes. Burning fake money is a very widespread funeral rite in China and other Asian cultures. I know that usually, specifically designed “hell money” is used, but it’s perfectly possible that at some buyers of this training money buy it for this purpose.
Difficult even to stupid people. Once you see the entire bill up close the Chinese writing is obvious. Plus the feel of the paper is obvious. There are also no security strips or watermarks. But if set up properly without touching it it does seem real.
I put a couple of them hanging out slightly in my old wallet and threw it on the floor of a restaurant we were in on Saturday just to see what would happen. It did look like there was at least $400 hanging out of it. After about 10 minutes this guy saw it, swooped it up off the floor and stuffed it into his pocket. We watched him sit at his table and sweat. You could tell he was nervous. Then my son-in-law walked over and fucked with him. Walked around like he was looking for something on the floor. He asked people at the guys table and 2 others if they had seen a brown wallet. The guy didn’t crack but was visibly shaken. Their table left before we did even though they came in after us. My SIL walked outside to see if the guy looked in the wallet to the way to his car but he didn’t. Would have looved to see his face when he saw the bills were bogus.
BTW, if any of this irks you join the club with my wife and my daughter. They didn’t find us fucking with a stranger funny at all.
The Chinese are actually moving to polymer based banknotes like the Canadians and a few other countries.
The correct metaphor for this situation is “elephant,” not “800-pound gorilla.” The “elephant in the room” is an awkward truth that is obvious to everyone but which nobody wants to actually mention.
The metaphor for the gorilla means an entity so powerful that nobody dare challenge it and alludes to the joke: Q: Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep? A: Anywhere he wants.