The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 26, June 28, 2004, Article 13

COUNTERFEITS OF CURRENT COINS SEEN AGAIN?

  Arthur Shippee reported the following item from
  The Ethicist, a column in the latest New York Times
  Magazine:

  Q: "I have a counterfeit quarter. I don't know where I picked
  it up, but it is obviously fake. Spending it would be wrong.
  It is hard to imagine the police taking an interest in it, so I have
  not reported it. But maybe this reluctance to report a fake
  25-cent piece is why counterfeiters coin quarters in the first
  place. Can you solve my two-bit problem?"

  A: "It would not be honorable either to spend the fake or to
  pass it along to another sucker. If someone steals my TV,
  I may not replace it by burgling the house next door. But
  I'm with you: the intriguing question is, Who would bother
  to counterfeit a quarter? In your place, I'd have it mounted
  and framed, a monument to the grotesque squandering of
  human ingenuity (you know, like prime-time TV).

  Curiously, I have witnessed the shadowy world of the
  counterfeit quarter. When I was a teenager, I took a metal-
  shop class where we were taught sand-casting, which for
  the timid majority like me meant pressing a wooden plaque
  into a box of sand, removing it and then pouring molten
  aluminum into the impression it left.  The result: an aluminum
  plaque that said -- if memory serves, and it doesn't --
  ''Say No to Books'' or ''Drugs Are Fundamental'' or
  something. A friend of mine, taking metal shop at a nearby
  junior high school, instead pressed quarters into the damp
  sand and used his aluminum knockoffs to buy lunch in the
  cafeteria. His life of crime lasted about three days. But we
  were all impressed when Treasury agents came to the
  cafeteria and hauled him away. Ah, school days."

  To read the full article, see: Full Article

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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