It is necessary to explore the recently discovered 1926 one-dollar coin of the First Agricultural Bank of Chaishan Special Zone, Hunan Province. This coin was only recorded in writing before, but according to the owner, it was found in the local ruins, but strangely, after 65 years, it is still impressive, brand-new, brightly printed, and made of high-count poplin, not white bamboo cloth as mentioned in the record. Therefore, most of the opinions in the spring currency industry think that it is a newly created counterfeit currency.
In addition to the above basic knowledge, the identification of paper money must also understand the three major factors that determine the authenticity.
1. Qualitative research
The paper quality of banknotes in different times is often different, so it is necessary to study the paper quality to study the authenticity of banknotes. Because paper money has to circulate for a long time, paper must have considerable toughness. In ancient times, mulberry bark was generally used as raw material to increase the thickness of paper. At present, all RMB banknotes are of this kind. Due to the erosion of years, their colors are different, such as dark gray, gray green and gray yellow, but their thickness and toughness are the same. The quality of banknote paper is poor. Generally, official documents, test papers and other waste paper are used, and banknotes are printed after regeneration. Because there was no bleaching treatment at that time, the ink remained, mostly blue-black, darker than the yuan note, the texture was not tight enough, it felt rough and loose, and the folds were often damaged. In the Qing dynasty, the official tickets of the household department were made of light beige or white thick paper with tough texture, while the banknotes in the Qing dynasty were made of thick paper and thin paper. There is a kind of tissue paper with poor quality, which is a shoddy product in Xianfeng's later period. At that time, a small amount of counterfeit banknotes were made privately. When real tickets are printed and distributed, they are usually nailed into a stack every 100 sheets, so there is often a small hole in the middle of the paper money.
When people forge ancient banknotes, they usually can't find suitable paper, or use Xuan paper instead, and then make them old by hand, such as smoking and dyeing, adding water stains and so on. But the thinness and crispness of paper are very obvious. Once this kind of rice paper is circulated, it will be damaged immediately, so it won't be genuine. Some people use mulberry paper to forge it, but now the mulberry paper is very thin and translucent, or it is forged by stacking several pieces of mulberry paper, which can explain the problem, because the real ancient banknotes are made of a single thick paper. However, this rule does not apply to modern times. For example, in the late Qing Dynasty, all kinds of banknotes issued by public and private money bureaus were thin paper, but the area was small. A silver ticket with a face value of 1200 yuan is often only half of the official ticket of the household department, so it does not need to be folded when used, which solves the problem of fragile paper. Generally speaking, during the reign of Tongzhi and Guangxu, copper yuan coupons were mostly leather paper with darker colors, or yellow yuan book paper and edge paper, while silver tickets were mostly white single-announcement and double-announcement. During Guangxu and Xuantong years, machine-made forest paper was used and printed with copper plate or steel plate. At that time, Wanyichuan Bank in Beijing and Tianjin had both horizontal tickets of Taoist paper and red one-yuan and five-yuan tickets of traditional paper. This paper is white, delicate and elastic, as thick as lambskin, and it is a special cotton brochure. I can't find it anywhere, so it can't be forged. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, British businessmen founded Macquarie Bank in China and issued paper money in their own form. Each banknote is printed on a small piece of paper, and the surrounding burrs have not been trimmed, so it is generally impossible to forge. After the Republic of China, the traditional domestic paper was basically no longer used, but machine-made paper was used, and the requirements for them were getting higher and higher. Now, all countries in the world use special methods to make paper. Japanese currency paper not only has the advantages of wear resistance, folding resistance and toughness, but also uses the unique plant fiber raw materials in China, and the American currency paper is sandwiched with irregular red and blue colored fibers. Swiss francs, British pounds and Hong Kong dollars have a safety line made of metal or plastic in the center of the paper, facing the light. This kind of banknote paper is difficult to forge.
In recent years, counterfeit banknotes in Soviet base areas can usually find problems in paper. Because the counterfeiters couldn't find the paper of the year, they switched to other papers, such as two series of coupons issued by the head office in eastern Hubei, two series of coupons issued by Dafeng District, two series of coupons issued by the farmers' bank in eastern Hubei, one-dime coupons and two-dime coupons issued by the production cooperatives in Tonggu County. They are all made of two pieces of light brown earthenware paper, which is different from the real thing. Because the paper made of Tonggu in eastern Hubei and Jiangxi belong to two provinces, how can the paper be as complete? So it is counterfeit money made in recent years.
2. Watermarking and steganography on paper money
In order to prevent counterfeiting, watermarks are often made on printed paper in advance. Watermark is made by rolling two metal rollers engraved with words and patterns, which feels very bright under the light. For example, there are many different watermarks on RMB, such as ruler cloth, five-pointed star, head of Mao Zedong, Tiananmen Square and so on. The counterfeit money copied by the color copier has no watermark, and the position of the watermark is only a light gray outline, which has no transparency. The same is true of counterfeit banknotes printed by photographic plate making.
In the process of engraving banknotes, some cheats are often put in inconspicuous places. For example, in the textile drawings printed by Agricultural and Industrial Bank of China 1932 American Banknote Company, there are English letters: A, B, N and Co, which means American Banknote Company. Bank of China 194 1 Dadong Edition The words Bank of China and Tang are engraved on the Great Wall. Central Reserve Bank 1940 Voucher There is a word "Zhuo" in the Woods on the right side of Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, which refers to Wang Daiqing, the foreman in charge of plate making at that time. In the same year, the 50-cent coupon had the word "central horse" written in secret, in which the central refers to the name of the bank and the horse refers to Ma Kuohyan, the person in charge of public works. On the front and back of the Central Reserve Bank 1944 200 yuan Voucher, there are four English words "US-AC", which was interpreted as "America is coming" at that time. In fact, it reflects the hatred of the broad masses of the people towards the Japanese aggressors. This kind of steganography on banknotes did play a certain role in the early era when printing and forgery technology were underdeveloped. Because the patterns on the early counterfeit banknotes are always not as clear as the real ones, this steganography will become analog or disappear during the copying process, but its anti-counterfeiting function has been weakened today with the development of science and technology.
3. Numbers and signatures on paper money
Numbering banknotes one by one is also an important means of anti-counterfeiting. In the early days, the circulation of paper money was not too large. Some reputable banks will recycle old banknotes every few years and replace them with new ones. The recovered old banknotes are arranged in the order of the original numbers, and each 100 number is tied into a pile, and half of them are cut off and destroyed. Once the old banknotes with the same number are found, they can be traced in time until the counterfeit banknote group is cracked. In order to reduce the number and make it easier to check, there are usually 1 to several crown characters before the number, and the crown characters have certain internal relations with the issue year and number to prevent the coinage of the crown number. According to the report of "Jiangsu Yancheng Coin News" in July, 199 1, two Yanfu bank notes were found to be identical in size, face value, pattern and serial number, presumably caused by the malfunction of the numbering machine during printing, so they were both 5264 132, which were produced in the special environment of that year. If this is found in modern paper money, one of them must be counterfeit.
The signature on paper money is an early anti-counterfeiting measure. For example, before the 1930s, many foreign bank notes in China were personally signed by the person in charge of the bank, which was difficult to imitate. Later, due to the large circulation of banknotes, signatures had to be printed. Sometimes printing money and printing signatures are carried out in two places in case of omission. 1934 Denaro Company, a British businessman, printed one-yuan and ten-yuan coupons of China Bank in Tianjin. It was originally planned to print the signature after arriving in Tianjin, but during the transportation, all the one-yuan tickets were taken away by unidentified people. In front of the department is a pattern of farmers driving cattle to plow the fields, so people who rob money forge their signatures and mix them together. Because of the dim ink and scrawled handwriting, it is easy to be seen through. Bank of China was eager to put a large number of one-dollar coupons printed with Ma Gengtian on the market in the second year, but 1934 one-dollar coupons printed with Niu Gengtian lost their value and were destroyed. So far, not many tickets have been found, but they have become treasures in old paper money.
In the future, X-ray fluorescence analysis method can be used to determine the composition of paper, ink and inkpad of a certain banknote. This method has been tried in the identification of ancient paintings and calligraphy, and the effect is ideal. The main component of general inkpad is mercury sulfide (cinnabar). However, someone analyzed the composition of the inkpad on Daming Tong Tong banknotes, but the result was surprising. There is no mercury but only lead, which means that this Daming banknote is made of lead sulfide inkpad. Because only one sheet was used in the test, it is not yet certain that all Daming banknotes use this printing color. The disadvantage of fluorescence analysis is that it is expensive. If it can be popularized, it will certainly bring great help to the identification of banknotes.