Fake 50 Sen coin

It was just another working day, as usual, my dad had to get the "Pay and Display" parking ticket to, well, park the car, what else. Apparently, the parking ticket dispenser is very sensitive to counterfeit coins, and he was surprised to find out that one of the 50 sens he's carrying is actually an illegal coin. That's when he showed me the coin in question. Of course, on a boring workday, anything can be interesting, so I took my time checking out the differences.

You can't really tell them apart unless you're really looking closely at it. I find it interesting that they (counterfeiters) actually put that much effort to counterfeit these 50 sen coins. Question is, is it worth all that effort? I wonder how much they cost a pop. Nevertheless, I took some photos with my trusty G7, so you can see for the differences for yourself.

The most obvious difference for the head is the lack of detail for the flower in the counterfeit version.

Its more obvious on the tail side, as you can see, the star is lacking some lines. They just omitted the lines altogether on the counterfeit coin.

Comparing the text engraving on the sides of the coins, same font but it seems the original's engraving is much deeper.

So there we have it, my original vs counterfeit 50 sen coin comparison. As far as I know those are the tell tale signs that I see. The counterfeit reminds me of a video game arcade token, with the overly shiny texture it has. I notice that it dents easily and you can tell the difference in the sound it produces when dropped on the floor. I read another guy blogging about it (dated 2006), and he said that you can try the magnet test, as the counterfeit will stick to a magnet. Unfortunately, it didn't for me, but it still feels fake to me.

Oh well, it could be a bad batch by Bank Negara, but I heavily doubt it.