Like, what’s the point of its existence when that denomination is difficult to come by since ATMs don’t disperse them. I mean, will they still refuse a £50 note when paying for a £45 purchase? They go full counterfeit detection mode just because an individual has it despite that being the real one (not fake). Also, why does the Bank of England keep printing more of that when they know people barely use it anyway?

  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
    8·
    3 days ago

    When I was at Uni and working part time my boss told me it was because the £50 note was easier to forge so they would want us to check it and ideally not accept it. The explanation of which I accepted without question at the time. LOL I didn’t give a shit.

    But thinking about it more why would a large denomination be any easy or harder to forge than a lower one?

    So I don’t know actually.

    • Denjin@feddit.uk
      11·
      3 days ago

      FWIW, it’s not about the note being harder for forge, but people are less familiar with handling them because they are so rarely used, therefore people are less likely to pick up on the clues that it’s a fake. A point that’s largely moot now considering how few people use cash for anything any more.

      • brewery@feddit.uk
        6·
        3 days ago

        Good explanation and just to add, it’s probably only slightly more expensive to produce a fake £50 than a fake fiver (materials, effort, etc) but it’s worth 10 times as much. It’s also the same risk of getting caught but 10 times the result each time

    • teft@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Why not do what other countries do and just make the denominations physically larger as the value increases? Now it’s harder to wash and reprint forgeries. Also if you use different color paper for each denomination you have another way to prevent forgeries of the washing and reprinting kind.

          • Denjin@feddit.uk
            1·
            2 days ago

            I guess people from wherever you’re from don’t understand anything they’re talking about before commenting online.

        • teft@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          Yes, downvote for asking why not fix your broken currency. That’ll encourage discussions.

          You asked:

          But thinking about it more why would a large denomination be any easy or harder to forge than a lower one?

          I explained why your large bills are easier to forge.

          • Gentryfried@feddit.uk
            3·
            3 days ago

            He’s saying “ummmm” because we actually already do that. Fun fact :).

            And we use different colours for each note.

            But BTW, why the hostility to our… currency? Are you like a very patriotic IRS agent or something? Our currency isn’t any more broken or extra forgeable than any other country’s. I think you’ve extrapolated too much from seeing people bring up the occurence of forgeries on this one post.

              • Gentryfried@feddit.uk
                3·
                3 days ago

                Votes are public (on your instance) but this isn’t reddit, so I just downvote things to indicate when incorrect information or bad attitude is on them (and people do the same to me and that’s fine). I suppose things are different on piefed, which has some psuedo-karma system, but that’s the outlier.

                A large benefit of lemmy in general is that we can vote without it being a kick in the balls to someone’s experience on the site. Because no karma system.

  • HumanPenguin@feddit.ukEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    Because historically they were to high to be used much. So many retailers staff were less able to ID fakes. Hence fakes were created.

    The. By the mid 2000s as prices got to the point hey were more useful. They were still high enough that card payments became common. So retailers rarely had the till cash to change them.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
    3·
    3 days ago

    There’s actually also a few notes of huge denominations like £100,000,000, they’re kept in banks and never enter circulation. I recall it’s something to do with issuing Scottish and Northern Ireland notes, those ones that are still pounds but are issued by places other than the Bank of England.

  • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
    1·
    3 days ago

    £50 notes were for rich people to do crime with. If you weren’t a rich person doing crime, you didn’t need them.

    Now rich people crime can be done online, they’re even less necessary.