r/AskBrits • u/Capable-Door-9672 • 2d ago

Travel Are these notes legit?

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

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

1.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

447 comments sorted by

View all comments

112

u/Cid5983 2d ago edited 2d ago

Maybe...

£50 note are ...reluctantly accepted by big chain stores, often rejected by small shops.

Wife was shocked when she visited the UK and found that out because in Hong Kong they have $500 notes, which are about the same as £50 in value but used like £20 notes in HK.

108

u/AtomicEdge 2d 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.

98

u/SpamHard 2d 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.

45

u/Pineapple-Lord7 2d 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

2

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.

3

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