Counterfeit Coin
There is little doubt that the method first employed in the manufacture of money was that of pouring fluid bullion into earthen moulds previously impressed by some rude artist with the device intended to be represented on the coin; and that (as now in some remote localities of Central India) a small cylindrical vessel, forming a smelting-furnace, a pair of tongs, a cutting-tool or file, and a pair of scales, constituted the entire apparatus for a mint. It is not a little singular that the casting process is that resorted to by counterfeiters up to this day. The customary mode adopted for the production of spurious money at present is precisely identical, indeed, with that employed in the manufacture of genuine coin by the monarchs and the moneyers—as the fabricators of money were then termed—of the Heptarchy, only that the coiners of to-day use appliances superior to those of the tenth century. A private coiner of the nineteenth century, whether in Birmingham or London, expends very little in the purchase of his plant of machinery. He provides himself with a pennyworth of plaster of Paris, which he converts into a mould; making a genuine coin serve as the medium for impressing the material when in a soft state with the devices—the obverse and reverse. If he cannot steal pint measures from a publican, he will have to invest a portion of his capital in Britannia-metal spoons at a shilling a dozen, and these he will break up and melt in an earthen pipkin, purchasable for another penny. With a tobacco-pipe for a ladle he will take up sufficient of the fused metal to create a florin, say, and this he will pour into the moulds. As soon as these are filled, and the base compound has become solidified, the moulds are separated, and any defects observable in the graining or milling of the edge are made good with a file or some other implement adapted to the nefarious purpose. If, after this, a clever confederate can finish the work by depositing a coat of silver (by galvanic agency), so much the better for the manufacturer, his chance of uttering being thus much enhanced.—Mechanics’ Magazine.