8 Ways to Catch a Counterfeit Currency

8 Ways to Catch a Counterfeit Currency

When you are scamming over a bill, sorry, I mean scanning over a bill, how are you to know if it is a genuine U.S dollar or a well crafted copy designed to deceive you. Unlike the early 1800s, you can no longer print notes at your leisure, even if you have a ton of gold in your basement to back it up. The shift from the gold standard to what we use today, fiat currency, straightened out the fluctuations in value across the many banks in the nation but it also lead to a more creative counterfeiting game. So how are you to tell if one of these finds its way into your hand and wallet? Before we answer that question, let’s get a little history lesson first:

Back during the time between the Revolution and the Civil War (we’re talking 1800s here), “counterfeiters exploited people’s unfamiliarity with the currency by issuing ‘spurious notes’ that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the genuine article” (8). Others produced “altered notes” which erased the real notes’ title, locality, or denomination and replaced them with new versions (8). When only a few banks issued notes, it was relatively easy to remember different designs, and detecting counterfeits was relatively easy. But as the decades passed, the market economy extended to the most remote corners of the new nation (that’s the US!), and counterfeiters and counterfeits were being produced like no one’s business. Hezekiah Niles said in 1818 that “We seem about to become liable to be called a nation of counterfeiters!” (6). So pervasive had counterfeiting become by the 1830s that people were desperate for solutions and ways to discern the difference between real notes and counterfeits. This post goes out to the frustrated and confused pre-United-States-people and modern-day people trying to figure out whether your paper is real or not. Here are 8 ways to catch a counterfeit:

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1. Watermarks - The hardest attribute of all to copy in the business of counterfeiting are watermarks. Embedded to the right of the printed portrait, is the watermarked portrait of that president. An easy way to tell if the bill is legit, hold it up to the light and take a gander. It should be visible in the light no matter which side you check. If you find a bill that is a counterfeit and watermarked, I’m not sure if you should call the police or tip your hat to them. Just kidding, call the Secret Service, they know what to do.

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