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Which is real and which is fake? Can't tell the difference? Well, that's because the fake watch is not just any old fakery, it's an award-winning falsification!
Every year, Museum Plagiarius Solingen, a German museum dedicated to showcasing the best of fake items, awards its Plagiarius Award to the world's best knockoffs:
This past year, a counterfeiter in Thailand replicated a Swiss Fortis watch (shown here) with such precision that it garnered a special award for falsification. The fake differs in details only the sharpest eye would notice—missing glow-in-the-dark paint on the face, smaller crowns that are buffed rather than brush-finished, and temperature scales with incorrect unit symbols. “The expensive details are left out, but the first impression is the same,” says Christine Lacroix, the museum’s managing director.
Oh, the fake one is the one on the right.
It all started with a smell of chemical fumes coming out of a luxury apartment in Los Angeles. When the police showed up, they found machine guns, counterfeiting equipment and $15,000 in high quality counterfeit Benjamins. The suspect bolted out the window, jumping across a series of balconies.
The hunt for a fugitive likened to Jason-Bourne ended up six months later with an equally mysterious question of "Who is Brian Alexik?"
The door was barricaded. A cache of loaded weapons, including an AK-47, sat next to a mosaic depicting the CIA seal. They found equipment for counterfeiting money. High-powered binoculars were trained on the U.S. Federal Reserve building next door.
What followed was a six-week hunt for a suspect who had slipped out of the fire escape moments earlier and whose evasiveness drew comparisons to fictional agent Jason Bourne.
Police would eventually find their man, Brian Alexik, hiding out in his girlfriend’s apartment less than a mile from where he fled. But three weeks on, detectives are still trying to figure out just who he is, what plot they may have thwarted and whether he was a lone wolf or part of a larger group.
It didn’t end, however, like in the movies:
"He got caught," Detective Dan Logan said. "When I interviewed him, he didn’t knock me out, take my gun and take my recorder like in the movies. He’s not as smart or resourceful as the Jason Bourne character."
Link (Photo: LA Police Department)
The familiar pictures of Founding Father Ben Franklin is still there, but there are a lot of new high-tech features being put in the new $100 bill, including a moving microprint that "looks like something straight out of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry":
The blue 3-D Security Ribbon on the front of the new $100 note contains images of bells and 100s that move and change from one to the other as you tilt the note. The Bell in the Inkwell on the front of the note is another new security feature. The bell changes color from copper to green when the note is tilted, an effect that makes it seem to appear and disappear within the copper inkwell.
“The new security features announced today come after more than a decade of research and development to protect our currency from counterfeiting. To ensure a seamless introduction of the new $100 note into the financial system, we will continue global public education of retailers, financial institutions and industry organizations to ensure that consumers and merchants are aware of the new security features,” said Treasurer of the United States Rosie Rios. (Source)
Why the redesign? While security and protection against forgery is always a concern for any currency, the failure of the US Government to stem the rise of the Superdollar – a counterfeit so well done that it’s almost impossible to detect – is to blame.
Seattle artist Jack Daws made eleven pennies by casting them from 18 karat gold and plating them with copper. One of those pennies was sold for $1,000 as a work of art. Another penny was spent at a news stand in Los Angeles. Yes, Daws sent one of the pennies into circulation in 2007 as a counterfeit -on purpose. He expected never to see it again. Over two years later, a graphic designer from Brooklyn noticed a golden gleam on a penny she was given as change. She put it away to investigate later, as she was a fan of unusual coins.
Then recently, while doing research about a 1924 Mercury-head dime, she remembered the penny and typed “gold penny” into Google, which returned information on science experiments to give a penny a gold color. She added “1970” and found an item about how Mr. Daws had put a 18-karat gold penny, dated 1970 with no mint mark, into circulation. It was heavier and smaller than a real penny.
In disbelief, she weighed the penny on a digital scale. It came in at three grams, one gram more than similar pennies from 1970. And it was slightly smaller than a normal penny, owing to the shrinking after the casting process.
She traced Mr. Daws’s phone number through the gallery and left him the message. When he called back, he knew it had to be his penny as soon as she described it to him.
Reed will keep the penny as a work of art. How many other hands did the gold coin pass through before she found it? We will probably never know. Link -Thanks, Bill!
(image credit: Lynn Rogan)
