SPURIOUS SOVEREIGNS.

Patea Mail, 23 October 1880, Page 3

SPURIOUS SOVEREIGNS .

For some years past there lias been an influx into England of spurious sovereigns, which it is believed arc manufactured in the United Stales. Each coin is true in weight, and so perfect in its ring as to deceive any but the most skilled ear; while the workmanship and execution arc such as to make it morally certain that the offendershave discarded clectrotypy as a clumsy process, and possessed themselves of coining-presses and dies of hardened steel, such as are actually in use at the Mint itself. The “ New York sovereigns, as they are termed, consist of gold alloyed with aluminum, and there is enough of the precious metal in each to give it an intrinsic value of some fourteen shillings. They pass the ordinary tests of ocular inspection, ringing, weight, and bending. Nitric acid seldom discovers their true character, and the best practical method of distinguishing them from good coin is by measurement, Theyare of precisely the same diameter as a genuine sovereign, but considerably thicker, and it was by the appreciable difference they effected in the height of rouleau# that their existence first became known to the authorities of the Bank. It is a strange thing that the factory from which they issue should still remain undiscovered, in spite of all that the public have done to unravel the secret. The truth, however, is that the public arc more or less powerless against crime when it assumes the proportions of a scientific craft. —Daily News