The Very Highest Quality Coins...

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Obverse of 1986 Fake One Pound Coin
Obverse of 1986 Fake One Pound Coin

Reverse of 1986 Fake One Pound Coin
Reverse of 1986 Fake One Pound Coin

Obverse of 1989 Fake One Pound Coin
Obverse of 1989 Fake One Pound Coin

Reverse of 1989 Fake One Pound Coin Obverse of 1989 Fake One Pound Coin

Fake Pound Coins
It is well known that British one pound coins are too easy to counterfeit. They have been in the news recently because the number of fakes has been underestimated by the Mint and treasury.
Fake pound coins are in the British media today, but this is old 'news'. Ken Peters of The Counterfeit Coin Club has been warning about it for years now. Here is a sample of a very poor quality fake we happened to spot a few year ago. We will be taking more photographs of fake pound coins in the next few weeks.

Coin News
In the April 2009 edition of Coin News magazine, there is an article about Ken Peters, an expert on counterfeit coins.
Ken states "My immediate target is to convince the Government , the Royal Mint and banks that they should take one of the biggest crimes of the present day seriously - the fake one pound coins in our change. In 2003 the Royal Mint announced that there were 15 million fake one-pound coins in circulation. I said at the time that this was unrealistic and that the true figure was around 30 million."
In December 2007 one Marcus Clindon was convicted of producing 14 million fake one-pounds. By September 2008 the Royal Mint had revised its estimate to 30 million fakes. "An oddly familiar sounding total", according to Ken Peters.
Considering that the April issue of Coin News magazine has a copy deadline of March 1st, the "news" being reported in all UK media today is very old news. In any case, Ken was pronouncing on the number of fake coins way back in 2003, and probably earlier.

Coin Authentication
From the website of the same name, we find:

The number of counterfeit British one-pound coins withdrawn from circulation remains low
YearNumber of counterfeit coins withdrawn*
2001162,000
200281,500
2003133,000
2004135,000
200586,500
The British Royal Mint released to the editor the annual number of one-pound counterfeit coins withdrawn by the banks over the last five years. These figures shown no significant increase in withdrawals since Royal Mint surveys in 2002 and 2003 showed that just less than 1 per cent of circulating one-pound coins were counterfeit.
The average withdrawal rate over the five-year period is 119,600. In December 2004 1,410 million one-pound coins had been issued into circulation. One per cent of counterfeit coins in circulation means about 14 million counterfeits. At the current withdrawal rate it would take more than 120 years to remove the current counterfeits from circulation. It would appear that the banks and coin handlers are failing to meet the challenge being presented to them by the counterfeiters.

March Coin News
Our office manager pointed out to me that there is an even more prominent article about fake pound coins in the March 2009 issue, and didn't I read it?

Is My Pound Coin a Fake?

Type Chart of Every Pound Coin Design

More about the Welsh Dragon

World Pound Coins
We have a page listing £1 Coins of Other Countries.

If you want to find the value of a coin you own, please take a look at our page I've Found An Old Coin, What's It Worth?

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