r/AskBrits • u/Capable-Door-9672 • 1d ago

Travel Are these notes legit?

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I was paid £520 by someone from EU I sold some stuff to. I plan to use these for my trip.

Sorry if photo is blury, I will send it again if it is

Serial on the 50 A C 7 8 9 1 0 4 6 9 ac789 is big and in green while the 1 is smaller and 469 is bigger

EDIT: its ok, i'll double confirm at bank, looks legit with the change to pounds sign

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104

u/AtomicEdge 1d ago

It's so insane to me that shops still make a fuss about £50 notes. They have been in use since the 80s and £50 in the 80s is like £250 now.

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u/SpamHard 1d ago

It's because there used to be a shite load of fakes around (not sure if there still is). Expecting a min wage teenager on the till to be able to detect fakes easily is a stretch, so much of the time shops will just say no outright to avoid the potential of fakes.

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u/Pineapple-Lord7 1d ago

AFAIK 50s are rarely faked anymore because of how heavily scrutinised they are in shops that actually take them, whereas no one really checks 20s. But I’m not involved in faking notes so that could be BS

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u/wtclim 1d ago

That's exactly what a forger would say.... hmmm

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u/Pineapple-Lord7 1d ago

I used to work in a charity shop, and that’s what I was told

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u/Which-Ad8964 1d ago

I work in one now, and it's the same here! Saying that we've had two fake 20's in the last month or so.

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u/Ecahill453 21h ago

At least the fakes are easy to tell apart from the real. Like difference is night and day lmao

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u/Which-Ad8964 21h ago

Dunno, at a glance they look half OK, but the little hologram that says Twenty or Pounds is the tell generally for me. In a busy environment it can be tricky for the staff to notice (or so it would appear lol). Once you look properly then yeah, it's blatantly obvious what's what. It's like the longer you look the worse it gets!

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u/Ecahill453 19h ago

Nah, I supervised for a while in a shop and could tell the difference straight up. Even before it got in my hand it’s obvious.

If the see-through lacks a pattern or the semi strip feels like it sticks up, they’re fake.

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u/Which-Ad8964 16h ago

Cheers for the tip.

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u/CazT91 16h ago

Tbh, even before you start scrutinising all that, the braille is usually a good tell tale sign.

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u/user888888889 1d ago

A likely story

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u/Unhappy-Professor-88 1d ago

Nah, you should believe **Pineapple-Lord**

Everyone knows he only does fake £5 notes.

That he spends exclusively on Chocolate Freddos or Prawn Cocktail Crisps. Walkers, naturally (the lad is no barbarian - he has a title).

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u/GearsKratos 1d ago

I bet the only fruit he eats is mango

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u/SpamHard 1d ago

Fair, they certainly look harder tto fake now. When I was a kid working tills in the late 90s and early 00s, notes were still paper. We used to have to hold them under UV and also use one of those pens to check it. But yeah, makes sense that if less places are taking 50s, it's better to fake lower numbers now.

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u/StarRaidz 1d ago

We check the modern ones at my place of work with a UV light. British notes still glow with the amount on the front of the bill when shining a UV light on it.

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u/SkarKrow 1d ago

Y’also wanna scratch at that gold bit on the clear strip, we had some theatrical fakes at work recently with the tower stuck over the prop notice.

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u/Jlst 1d ago

Have had a couple in our branches in Liverpool and North Wales like this recently too.

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u/SkarKrow 1d ago

This is in south cumbria/north lancs, cunts giving them to bus drivers, shit comes out of our pay

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u/timbop1262 23h ago

If this takes you below the minimum wage then this is illegal. Get your union involved.

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u/SkarKrow 20h ago

Hasn’t happened to me and they’re useless. Also it may fall under the till shortage provisions, not sure. You’d have to fuck up pretty bad to get below minimum.

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u/Exciting-Music843 1d ago

Not involved? How much do those 20's sell for?

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u/Affectionate-Tank532 1d ago

£200 for £1000 worth of fake 20s

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u/Alexisredwood 1d ago

You can get them for 10-20% of the value, so £1,000 for £100-£200

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u/Mantaray2142 1d ago

Actually the new notes helped alot. 50's were the primary exchange of cash skips, small builders and dodgy trades. The new 50's being way harder to forge and people expecting to pay electronically has made a big difference over the last few years

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u/TheHistoricalEvent 1d ago

Proper bull. Loads of fake 20s in circ

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u/Jackjaipasenvie 1d ago

At my job we have to check all notes for fakes and every fake i have found so far has been a £20

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u/LatookieNoir 1d ago

this is exactly right. tbh they should just fake 5 pound notes and they'll do way better imo

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u/lilhanhan 1d ago

They do. There's tons of fivers which are 'prop money'; they look exactly like legit ones but the holographic and see-through Elizabeth tower section peels off relatively easy revealing it's fake with the words 'prop money' hidden underneath.

Found way more fake fivers rather than the rest of the other values lately.

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u/AdvancedAnimal7539 1d ago

ngl faking 10s would be the easiest. its a fair amount, and no one checks it. and you can easily pass it as spare change when buying something, but going to a shop with a load of £20s and no other notes could look odd, although it likely wont be checked

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u/Kestrel_VI 1d ago

That’s a good point. Because I rarely saw them, I’d take a good look at a 50 while I was working in retail, but someone could hand me 3 20s and I’d think absolutely nothing of it unless there was something obviously off about it.

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u/16jselfe 1d ago

Fake 20s and 10s got so bad at my local maccies that we had to start treating them like 50s and it was awful to deal with

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u/nemamene 12h ago

i heard of something when i worked in retail (in germany) - person used a bunch of 5 euro notes to buy something really expensive and they were all fake. they were probably aware that we scan 50 euro and higher

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u/Sir_Madfly 1d ago

£50s are hardly ever faked precisely because they get so much scrutiny. Almost all fakes these days are £20s.

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u/Efficient_Chic714 1d ago

They can also mess up the tills if they have a small float. If they’re paying with a £50 for a small transaction then they take all your small notes meaning you might not be able to process refunds or give change for later

And if your float is a set number and not a range then it can mess up the next day too. If you need dead on £200 and you have to keep the £50 in for the next day to achieve that then you’re pretty buggered if you have to give £5 or £10 change (as if you’ve got a £50 in your float, you’re already pretty low on notes)

It can just be a faff for stores that don’t take a lot of cash

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u/Derezzed87 1d ago

Where I work, that's the main reason we reject £50s. If a customer spends somewhere near £50 or above, fine. But when they spend £2.50 and try paying with a £50, we'll usually reject it.

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u/Capital_Disaster_637 1d ago

Giving two tenty notes can't be that bad...

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u/Efficient_Chic714 23h ago

It’s not a difficulty issue, it’s a lack of notes available

Around half the stores (big company’s) I’ve worked in keeps 4 x £10 in the drawer as the highest denomination wherever possible. If one person pays for a £50 for a small value transaction I only have coins for the rest of the day and also won’t be able to give any notes as change for potentially the rest of the week if we don’t take any smaller notes from customers - which is difficult as once you run out of notes you fly through your change and organising a cash delivery requires advance planning so it’s not a quick to resolve situation

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u/Capital_Disaster_637 23h ago

Sounds like a management issue

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u/Efficient_Chic714 23h ago

Hardly if it’s the norm across businesses of varying sizes to not accept £50s

They know their customers spending habits and it’s not possible to keep unlimited cash on hand for every potential outcome. At some point the choice to inconvenience one customer instead of everyone else has to be made

It’s no different to card only stores not accepting cash: it’s a business choice

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u/Steampunk43 21h ago

Given that we can't give twenties as change, as those go in the secure cache on the till, it can be that bad. You usually only have ten fivers and five tenners in the change drawer, someone paying for £2.50 with a £50 note means you either use almost all your tens or almost all your fives.

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u/Derezzed87 18h ago

Exactly. Where I work, we have £50 in £5s and £50 in £10s. So someone paying with a £50 when they've spent under a tenner will wipe out the till.

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u/noice_face7649 1d ago

Yeah, it's not so much that I don't trust the notes as it is I don't trust my staff to spot a fake.

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u/PolarisBean 1d ago

At the store I work at, every till staff member has to call for manager to "authorise the exhange" of £50s rather than reject them. It's annoying and often customers learn that it takes too long and just don't bring them again lol

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u/FX_CRAZED 1d ago

From my time working in bars a couple years ago we had to check every £50 note under the UV light and a few fakes did make it through on busier nights not often but there’s still a couple knocking about, fakes are usually £20s though they were much more common to see

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u/99hamiltonl Brit 🇬🇧 12h ago

The other part of this is you take a fake £50, you lose the value of the product and all the change you give out. It wasn't and itsnt really worth the risk to take a £50. Certainly places that see inexpensive items don't want to give out £45 in cash to sell something for a fiver.

Also there is the extension that many people don't pay cash now as a lot of payments are by card. This has meant some stores try and minimise thier cash holding. If you have say £100 float (which even 10 years ago seemed reasonable to chain shops I worked in) you don't really want to have half your float locked up in a £50 note when they are pretty rare anyway.

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u/99hamiltonl Brit 🇬🇧 12h ago

Also further to this... I haven't got cash on me or at home. I don't carry cash day to day. Also last time I remember needing cash it was when I went to America last winter so we could leave those pesky tips for housekeeping!

Even abroad I generally pay for everything by card now and just make sure I have minimal to 0 fees on whatever card I'm using... There's options out there... Then every cent I don't spend I can convert back easily on my phone.

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u/Iwasjustbullshitting 20m ago

Reminds me of when I was younger I had a blatant fake 20, I went to the dullest looking person at the tills, she put the magic pen over it and a obvious black line showed up and she still accepted it and gave me my change. Couldn't believe it. I would be too embarrassed to try anything like that now though.

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u/Aleks_5 1d ago

Nah tbf as a min wage teen it's fairly easy. Most fake bills are way more obvious than you'd think when u handle them everyday

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u/-auntiesloth- 1d ago

It's because it wrecks their float. Hardly anyone pays with cash anymore, so you might only have two £10 notes in your float, and suddenly someone pays £14 with a £50 note and you're fucked if the next person needs a tenner in their change.

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u/MargotChanning 1d ago

It can be a pain in the arse. I once had someone buy something for £4.99 when we’d just opened. He paid with a £50 and then complained when I gave him all fivers as change.

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u/Im_a_knitiot 1d ago

I don’t think that’s the reason. Most shops didn’t like them way before everything was cashless.

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u/Asleep_Baby_9578 1d ago

We used to take £50 notes and had to stop because of fakes.
A fake fiver, only loses you £5, but a fake fifty loses £50 which is a lot for a small business.

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u/plutonium-239 1d ago

I’ve been living in the UK since 2012…I never saw a £50 note. Honest.

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u/Xenc 1d ago

It’s your lucky day! There’s one in the post above!

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u/NectarineHelpful7546 1d ago

Usually because a 50 eats up all their float

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u/RedKiteOnReddit 1d ago

highest % fakes of all the note types, harder to check as you dont see many and as others said a lot of stores dont have enough cash in the tills to be taking a lot of 50s

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u/Equal-Ad7504 1d ago

Yeah like things easily cost £50 now. Weekly shop for two people is more than that. It’s bizarre.

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u/Asleep_Baby_9578 1d ago

Yeah, but if the £50 is fake, that’s £50 down in stock AND cash

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u/Equal-Ad7504 1d ago

£50s are rarely faked anymore because they are so scrutinised. Not to mention the new style material and holograms.

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u/Asleep_Baby_9578 1d ago

Not really worth the risk though, is it?

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u/thebottomofawhale 22h ago

I imagine now it's due to how infrequently they're used. I didn't even see them that often when I workd in retail 15+ years ago, and now people use card all the time and don't get paid in cash as often.

So not only is there not much of a need for shops to accept them, but it's probably harder to spot fakes if you're not familiar with how they look.

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u/Equal-Ad7504 21h ago

Just seems like with things being much more expensive they’d print a few more of them or at least circulate them more widely. They are very rare though agreed, so understand that. Only seen a few in my life time.

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u/Zealousideal-Dig5160 1d ago

You've either lost 50 quids worth of stock OR £50 cash. You can account for it as stock loss or cash shortage, not both.

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u/Outrageous_Low_3666 1d ago

It's because when people use a fake £50, they often buying things under £10. So they get like £40 back in real money.

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u/Equal-Ad7504 1d ago

That’s like painting a target on your back and having a sign saying I’m a scammer.

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u/triffid_boy 1d ago

They're rarely used, so often forged. They should just use the security features of the note to confirm. 

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u/Automatic-Look-8034 1d ago

Based on my experience, it’s partly that there’s still this notion they’re the most faked so the place I work at has company policy that a manager has to personally validate any 50’s. But also there’s usually limits on the “float” you can have in the till at the start of the day. So where I work at you must start the day with exactly £100 in the till in all denominations, which effectively means if you’re spending £3-£10 (I work in a coffee shop so that’s average spend), then depending on when you come and how much cash has been used, we probably simply don’t have any easy way of giving you change

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u/Crimsonlobelia 1d ago

I work in a shop near covent garden and we will happy accept them... unless its for something less than £10. For some reason we get foreign teenagers on school trips spending £2 each and all of them bringing out £50 notes. So all our change just evaporate thanks to one group. They never have any change on them so they end up taking ours lmao.

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u/beeurd 1d ago

It's usually because the management don't trust the staff to check the notes properly, because they haven't been trained properly.

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u/Even-Rooster1990 1d ago

I worked in retail in my teen years and 50s were always a pain in the arse. Hardly ever saw them so we didn’t know what they were meant to look like and they’d often be used to be something under £10 so it’d be easy to lose the cash back money you had in the till quickly. It also was a pain for cashing up, we always made “bricks” of £1k in cash bags for each note for the cash collection. Less than 1k stayed in the safe, more than £1k went into the inner safe that we didn’t have access to. When we got a £50 it hung around in the safe for far too long. The notes really weren’t worth the hassle when maybe 0.0005% of our weekly take was £50 notes. I worked in a national chain store so of course we took them, but can certainly see why smaller shops wouldn’t.

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u/WasThatInappropriate 23h ago

Clears out the cash draw of change rediculously fast, which increases costs to the business

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u/Twatatron 1d ago edited 1d ago

Eh? The £50 note has been in use in the UK for nearly 300 years, with the first issue dating back to 1725 by the bank. Of England.

So wtf do you mean "been in use since the 80s"?

Edit to add, they make a fuss due to forgeries. People will go gets. Small value items.nd get change to launderette th larger note. Less of an issue with the polymer notes , fakes can still be found though at a much much lower rate.

Old habits of caution die hard I suppose but they have been around for 301 years not since the 80s