Is the constant revision of our US paper money worth the trouble? Sure the new money looks a little better and a little more colorful, but it still spends the same. One has to wonder if professional counterfieters are really a greater cost to our economy than the costs of developing the currency, training cashiers and retooling vending machines.
10 Suriname Guilders is currently worth 0.00399616 United States Dollars (less than ½¢). In 2001, it was worth about 2.6 times as much. Before 2001, the Guilder had wild price fluctuations. Then the Suriname government imposed a trading band of 2500 to 2800 Guilders to the US Dollar.
In spite of this historically low value, the bill has quite a few security features including colorful ink, security thread and Moiré patterns to defeat scanners.
The new US $20 is just now getting away from it's monochrome green, but the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing has introduced several other security features that are aimed at high-tech digital counterfeiting outfits. The Moiré patterns are much tighter and more complicated than the Suriname bill. The faint background gradient is actually composed of nested groups of concentric hexagons. This feature is too fine to be seen in the scan on the left.
The US continues to have a very low incidence of counterfeitting (1–2 in 10,000 bills are fake). But the new twenty has already been faked. As long as there are stupid clerks, poor-quality fakes will continue to be used. There have been at least two individuals that have passed off $200 novelty bills.
In Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, cashiers took the obviously fake $200 bill at both the Blue Flame and the Food Lion stores. It features a picture of President George W. Bush on the front, and protest signs in the White House lawn on the back.
The police investigated and arrested the perpetrator. He could only be charged with “attempting to obtain property by false pretenses,” not counterfeiting, because there is no $200 US bill.
A similar scenario played out at a Dairy Queen in Danville, Kentucky. Police are still looking for the woman who left with her $2.12 in food and $197.88 in change.
These novelty $200 bills are available across the country and on the internet. I bought mine from TheFreeGuide.com. The 10 Guilder bill comes courtesy of the Vermulens as a reminder of their labors in Suriname guiding churches and translating the Bible.
Posted by capoccia at November 25, 2003 06:15 AM