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by hnlmorg 1913 days ago
In my experience most places were hesitant because they didn't have the change in the cash register. Anywhere busy with a full register accepted £50 notes happily.

edit: to add to that, it used to be that £1 coins were the most forged in sterling cash. I can't say if that's still the case, but at one point it felt like 1 in 3 pound coins were a fake.
4 comments
RobertKerans 1913 days ago
Yep, my experience as well. I worked in a busy club all through university, and we never had an issue accepting £50 notes, but at the quiet bar I sometimes worked at we were sometimes hesitant to accept them as it tended to wipe out the float.

Minor, and probably specific to busy bars, but it did come up: there's also the practical issue of where you put a £50 note as there's no space for it in a register. So you kinda shove them at the bottom of another stack, but there's the danger that when you're very busy and handing change back you'd grab it without looking. So always had to tell another staff member there was a £50 in the register, and ideally that register got emptied asap.

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samizdis 1913 days ago
Not quite one in three, but quite a lot. Here's a relevant bit from the Wikipedia page [1] :

> During later years of the round pound's use, Royal Mint surveys estimated the proportion of counterfeit £1 coins in circulation. This was estimated at 3.04% in 2013, a rise from 2.74%.[9][10] The figure previously announced in 2012 was 2.86%, following the prolonged rise from 0.92% in 2002–2003 to 0.98% in 2004, 1.26% in 2005, 1.69% in 2006, 2.06% in 2007, 2.58% in 2008, 2.65% in 2009, 3.07% in 2010 and 3.09% in 2011.[40][41] Figures were generally reported in the following year; in 2008 (as reported in 2009), the highest levels of counterfeits were in Northern Ireland (3.6%) and the South East and London (2.97%), with the lowest being in Northwest England.[42][43][44] Coin testing companies estimated in 2009 that the actual figure was about twice the Mint's estimate, suggesting that the Mint was underplaying the figures so as not to undermine confidence in the coin.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_pound_(British_coin)

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varispeed 1913 days ago
It's also that people don't care much about coins. When I used cash more back in the day, I remember going through my change from time to time and I had coins from all over the world passing as pence coins.
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dspillett 1913 days ago
> it used to be that £1 coins were the most forged in sterling cash

IIRC that is/was only in number though, not total value.

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