Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt gets a rare glimpse of one of the largest coin collections in Britain inside a vault in London - but they are all fake.
Richard said:"Today there are lots of coins worth over a million pounds, so if you can make one to look like one of those and sell it for a fraction of the market value you are still making a lot of money. People have to be very wary."Richard put down in front of me two almost identical George V gold £2 coins dated 1911. I couldn't tell the difference, except the real one was shinier.
Last year a criminal gang were caught making modern £2 coins which they sold at car boot sales across Essex. They had bought enough metal to make 107,640 coins with a face value of £215,280.A metal strip used to make counterfeit cash in Essex - in what police described as a rare example of modern coin forgery
Richard said:"The trouble was the coins tended to leave universities and schools and get passed on as the real thing." The UK's National Crime Agency said the Essex fake £2 coin investigation was a rare example of modern coin forgery, though there have been other cases. And Scotland Yard's Arts and Antiques unit has recently investigated the smuggling of fake ancient coins into the UK.
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