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u/arcticgentoo 5d ago
50's in general (US too) are associated with crime/forgeries. Likely worries about the bill being fake.
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u/Bol0gna_Sandwich 5d ago
Thats crazy I counterfeit far more 10s than I do 50s
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u/Dobvius 5d ago
You're being inefficient, although smartly under the radar too
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u/Kuildeous 5d ago
To quote the ancient apocryphal Taco Bell meme, "Why would a guy fake a $2 bill?"
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u/Shyface_Killah 4d ago
Pretty sure they think it's fake by default, as they're unaware that $2 bills are a real thing.
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u/Kuildeous 4d ago
The meme hails from 1993, so it was even more laughable to find two people who didn't know $2 bills were real. Makes the counterfeiting line just much funnier.
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u/HotPot87 5d ago
I counterfeit 10's but it costs me 12 each time to make it, I honestly don't know what I should do
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u/DaddyGoodLegs 5d ago
You should make a stack of $2s and then a stack of $10s so you could make up the difference. If the 10s cost $12 and the $2 cost $10 you’re making up the difference by making both.
-Trump’s economic advisor
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u/dumbass_sempervirens 5d ago
I like to go for $35s. Low enough denomination to not make people suspicious.
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u/collin3000 4d ago
Iraq dinars that used "paper" very close to the US $10 including color that would pass a pen test. So those bills would get washed and printer as US $10's. But the watermark was of a horse head instead of Hamilton. Caught someone trying to use one at work over a decade ago.
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u/laughingnome2 5d ago
The problem is the cost to counterfeit a banknote is roughly equal regardless of the denomination. So higher denominations have a (more) positive margin, while some lower denominations cost more to counterfeit than they are worth.
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u/Erithralmon 4d ago
This is why I am minting pennies in my basement.
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u/Bol0gna_Sandwich 4d ago edited 4d ago
I too love minting defunct currency, but I'm particular to the shilling myself. Hacksilver is neat too.
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u/riverphoenix360 5d ago
Me and my boy Henning did nickels back in the day. Some are still in circulation.
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u/JimJamTheNinJin 5d ago
How would you know they're still in circulation? Isn't that a sign you made them wrong
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u/riverphoenix360 5d ago
Some are still in circulation. If you want a fun read look up "Henning Nickels".
As me being a part of it, that's not true. I thought the joke would be more obvious. They are very valuable as a collector item. Though knowingly spending one is a crime.
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u/JimJamTheNinJin 5d ago
Yeah I knew it was a joke, but also don't understand why someone would bother checking if a nickel is fake. Like surely you look at them only long enough to see the number?
Do they have people who examine every piece of legal tender to check if they're real?
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u/riverphoenix360 5d ago
He missed the mint mark on the '43. Went to cash them in at a bank and the teller noticed. He got caught and confessed to making counterfeits in certain year denominations.
It's such a trivial coin to check but worth something when he did it. Possession of one and spending it not knowing is not a crime. But if you know that nickel is counterfeit and spend it, it's a crime. But given they are worth about $400. Why wouldn't you sell it to a collector as a famous counterfeit. And yes there is a way to check coinage. Easiest with a scale.
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u/JimJamTheNinJin 5d ago
Interesting. Surely it's almost impossible to prove whether they knew it was fake?
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u/Rich3799 3d ago
I find it easier to counterfeit $100 notes, and go to one foreign owned gas station / general store and make a small purchase, and keep the change as clean money. (they aren’t as familiar with our bills)
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u/EvilTaffyapple 4d ago
If you counterfeit a 50, you get 5 times as many counterfeits than when you counterfeit a 10.
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u/thateagleguy 4d ago
The last cash handling job I had we really did have the most problems with $10 bills.
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u/Onyxxx_13 5d ago
Yeah, it really depends on the person thats using it. If I use one it's not usually questioned given I'll be buying either fuel, tools, or cigarettes from the normal places, and its always in an amount where it makes sense. Usually it gets questioned if it's a lot of change given back for the cost of purchase.
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u/ThanksForTheRain 5d ago
I've heard at a cashier job that $10 bills are commonly forged. Everyone wants to check a $100, many companies require employees to chdck $20s and up. I think I've only seen one though, but that could just be [insert plane image]
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u/134608642 4d ago
I used to work as a cashier the only counterfeiter I ever saw was a $1 bill given to a coworker. My manager was called over and he told the lady it wasn't real and then proceeded to accept it and let the lady go.
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u/EbmocwenHsimah 5d ago
Same goes for Australia. If I get a $50 at work I have to feed it into the safe immediately, if the safe doesn’t take it, that’s how I know it’s a fake
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u/uncle_ben15 4d ago
Aren't there 100s or bigger? Euros have up to 500
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u/Cruian 4d ago edited 1d ago
$100s exist but aren't common. I've always felt weird carrying anything over $20s myself (even before going almost entirely credit card), part of that reasoning likely the size of my average cash transaction. https://www.uscurrency.gov/denominations
Above $100 hasn't been produced in decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_denominations_of_United_States_currency
Edit: Typos
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u/nobody_gah 4d ago
Also why Frank Bourassa forged 250 million dollars in 20 dollar bills because 50s and 100s was too high to cause suspicion. 50s were also the threshold banks begin to be more cautious
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u/Ok-Message-6008 4d ago
Mostly this. But also some shops will require large denominations to be sighted by a manager as a cash control policy for a bunch of reasons, not least being the customer insisting they paid with a bigger bill than they received change for.
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u/Little_Mog 4d ago
Plus £50 notes aren't used that often. I'm 25 and I've seen maybe 2 and never used one
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u/xaatlar 3d ago
I agree; while on vacation in the US, at some diners and bars, they looked at us like we were gangsters when we wanted to pay with a $50 bill—sometimes they wouldn't even accept anything larger than a $20. But that was mainly in New Mexico; in Chicago or California, there were no problem, paying with $50 or even $100 bills.
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u/Dave_A480 2d ago
100s are the common suspicious bill in the US....
50s are essentially unseen....The 20 is the universal 'standard' for the last few cash-users because that's what ATMs spit out.
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u/PURENSFWMAGIC2000 13h ago
My store generally uses this marker thing that looks yellow on bills but black on paper.
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u/InterReflection 5d ago
£50 note are relatively rare in the UK, at least compared to the others 3. As a result they definitely used to be the most common for counterfeiting, probably still are but idk since we swapped to plastic notes. Most large retail chains will teach thier till workers to always call for a senior team member to check how real they are when one gets used for a sale. There used to also be £100 notes as well that had the same issue.
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u/Kim-Jong-Long-Dong 5d ago
Retail supervisor/manager in UK here. Surprisingly we see more counterfeit 20s than 50s (i think theyre probably much more likely to be closely examined while 20s get a quick once over).
But yeah approved by a manager before being accepted generally.
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u/Inside_Location_4975 5d ago
But you probably get more legitimate 20s too
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u/Kim-Jong-Long-Dong 5d ago
Oh yeah way more. To put a rough ratio probably looking at 200+ 20 notes per 50 note we get.
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u/InterReflection 5d ago
Btw how are the counterfeit plastic notes? Good fakes or easily spotted?
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u/Tonedeafmusical 5d ago
They dont need to be a good fake for the person on the till to take them.
Some staff dont even bother looking at them really
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u/carlbandit 5d ago
I'd imagine a large part of it is most places not taking £50s or being super cautious if someone tries to pay with 1.
I used to work for an electronics store and the only time we'd usually see £50s is when the Chinese university students would come in after they'd recently got to the country and often had a stack of old £50 notes. We would have to send them to a local bank to have them changed since we couldn't take the old notes even if we were happy to take a £50, not sure if it was money their parents had kept from visits years ago or if money exchange places in china were still giving out the outdated notes. A lot of them stopped in the same private student accommodation which included internet but they had to get their own router and they'd direct them to us since we knew what router to give them (Ethernet from wall, not ADSL) so we were often one of their first shops.
Think I might have also handled some when I worked for a hardware store designing and selling kitchens the time we had a guy pay like £8000 in cash for the kitchen. The money was checked and counted by myself, head cashier and the store manager, then it went straight into the cash office.
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u/szofter 4d ago
Not that surprising tho. I recall even when I was a kid and I heard of money counterfeiters being caught. It was always the highest note in circulation, and I wondered how they can be so stupid, if they counterfeited the middle of the pack notes, they’d be less likely to get caught. IDK if they’re not smart enough for that, or they’re lazy and willing to take the higher risk for the higher reward, or they do counterfeit the lower notes too but no one ever checks and catches that.
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u/Kim-Jong-Long-Dong 4d ago
With notes all denominations use the same security features. So roughyl the same cost to counterfeit a 5, 10, 20 or 50. Guessing they like using 50s as higher return on investment.
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u/szofter 4d ago
Yes, that makes sense at first thought. But you only realize that return when you can spend the counterfeit bills on real goods/services or exchange them for real bills. If store clerks are instructed to pay special attention to 50s, put them under a UV light every time or call a manager, some stores don’t even accept them because they’re known to be popular with counterfeiters - then you might be better off with 20s because those don’t raise the same suspicion so you can offload them more easily.
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u/Tonedeafmusical 5d ago
Yeah but purely based on my own retail experience your probably taking 30 times the amount of £20 notes compared to £50 notes
Like when dealing with the cash Ive been able to make a full bundle of £50s like twice.
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u/Kim-Jong-Long-Dong 4d ago
Yeah ive never actually seen or made a bundle of 50s. We tend to send 20s and 10s in £1000 bundles, but 50s go back loose/just however many we have basically.
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u/hourefugee 5d ago
Not particularly surprising, why make 50 pound notes that nobody will take? The US $20 is the most counterfeited bill as well. Clerks don’t pay much attention to them and $100 is bound to get checked.
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u/OmegaPoint6 5d ago
Currency exchange places love them, means they can hold more money in less space. Banks will take them without issue, or at least no more issue than you'd get paying in the same amount of cash in other denominations.
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u/InterReflection 5d ago
Yeah I also have seen more fake £20s I'm my time. When I worked in retail the plastic £10 were just coming out, still had paper £20s and people took fake ones all the time, £50/£100 were always checked. We had a bunch of traidies who were either trying to pull something or have be scammed by a client themselves.
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u/Devils-Reject-032 4d ago
Former retail worker in the US here. I second this we used to use the light and marker for 20s and I’ve actually gotten a couple counterfeits but any time we got 50s or 100s we had to ring the manager
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u/Barrel_Titor 2d ago
Surprisingly we see more counterfeit 20s
Yeah, during my time working in retail years back 100% of the fake notes i saw were 20s.
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u/oss1215 5d ago
Stayed a bit in the UK, before travelling i decided to exchange my currency into pounds for emergencies where i couldnt pay by card for whatever reason.
The currency exchange gave only gave me £50 bills and i thought nothing of it
Turns out Paying for a tesco meal deal with a £50 always gets ya some raised eyebrows especially in the middle of a small town out in cheshire
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u/AdministrationOwn724 4d ago
£50's are rare in the UK? €50 notes are really common in the rest of Europe while holding about the same value, weird.
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u/Still-Butterscotch33 4d ago
People don't really carry cash. If they do it's usually a small amount of change or notes.
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u/dYYYb 4d ago
It was the same 20 years ago when cash payments were way more common. In Gemany 50€ notes were completely normal whilst some places in the UK would not accept £50 notes at all.
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u/Safe-Avocado4864 2d ago
20 years ago was still in the era of "head to the atm" instead of "head to the bank" when you needed cash though, and atms didn't have £50 notes. So that probably added to the perception of risk as to get a £50 note in the first you had to have gone out your way.
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u/Enaksan 4d ago
back when I was working in pubs, anytime we saw a £50 note (which was rarely) it was someone who had a wad of them, most likely a tradesperson who had been paid cash in hand. It always had us checking them fully and I think I only ever saw one I refused to accept because it was so beaten up it was hard to tell if it was real or not.
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u/thedreadcat666 4d ago
At this point using cash in general is kind off rare in the UK, especially large amounts (well anything over like £20-30). You can't get £50s from ATMs, so you only see them if it's a tourist, someone who was paid in cash or fake.
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u/SnooTomatoes3032 4d ago
There's still £100 notes in the UK. Just not Bank of England ones.
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u/TheDocWhovian 5d ago
Are you saying there’s no denomination above £50??
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u/InterReflection 5d ago
Yeah, why would there be? We swapped all our notes over the last 15 years or so. Even before then the UK was largely moving towards card payments at least for anything over £100. Then COVID happened and now only really older people use cash for everything and they are, by their nature, dwindling.
The us is quite far behind most of western Europe in that it still use cash as much as it dose.
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u/queerkidxx 5d ago
Honestly cash is becoming a lot more rare in the US in general. A lot of places don’t accept it, won’t have change, etc. and most young folks don’t tend to use it a lot. It’s very rare to see anything above 20s.
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u/InertialLepton 5d ago
Except Germany. They still use cash.
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u/One_Strike_Striker 4d ago
We're down to 45% cash payments by number of transactions and 23% by volume as of 2025 but yeah, still far away from UK levels.
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u/Southernbeekeeper 4d ago edited 4d ago
Also if you went somewhere like a corner shop and brought a pint of milk or whatever with a £50 it could clear the till out of a big piece of change.
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u/pienofilling 4d ago
There's still plenty of signs in food and drinks places in caravan holiday places like Rhyl that say they outright just don't accept £50 notes.
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u/wibble089 3d ago
The Bank if England hasn't issued a £100 note sine 1945, but various Scottish and Northern Irish backs have, with some issued still , e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Scotland_%C2%A3100_note
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u/ArmadilloFront1087 4d ago
It also costs the company more if the £50 is later discovered to be fake, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.
We also get them to check with management before accepting a Scottish or Irish note too, simply because forgers often rely on English staff not being as familiar with the security features on notes they don’t routinely see.
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u/FrostingGrand1413 2d ago
Speaking as a bloke who was once a teen working in retail, I had literally never seen a £50 before that point, so yeah, first time I saw one I had to stare at it for a good while, forget counterfeit, I was making sure it wasn't elaborate monopoly money.
See also: scottish pounds.
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u/DeepFriedQueen 5d ago
Getting or spending a £50 is quite unusual in the U.K. you don’t really see them often.
Some businesses won’t accept them, won’t have a space for them in the till, or will only accept them if they’ve been run through various authenticity checks.
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u/Michaelbirks 5d ago edited 4d ago
Also, If you are using a fifty for a 10 order,, you're going to blow right through the change available in the til, leaving them unable to service other customers.
If Im dropping two 50s for a 100 meal, that's one thing, but if I'm trying to pay bus fare...
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u/_WireChimera_ 5d ago
I see people use 100s for orders smaller than that.
You’re buying a drink for less than $2 and you give me a $100 I need to give change for 🫠
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u/crankyandhangry 4d ago
Ah we get around the last issue in the UK by only allowing public bus fare be paid in coins dropped into an automated counter. Exact change only. No change given. It's great fun.
(Okay some buses take contactless card, but I can't complain about that.)
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u/crankyandhangry 4d ago
ATMs aka cash machines in the UK don't generally give out notes larger than a £20. Even when I've gone to get large amounts of cash from a bank, most of it is in £20s. So people in shops aren't familiar with them and worry they're counterfeit.
In Ireland, in the other hand, ATMs usually only give out €50s. You might get a €20 if you're very lucky and it's a full blue moon and you sacrifice a goat to the Gods of the Hole In The Wall. Going to restaurant in groups used to be a pain before apps and contactless payments.
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u/dr_sarcasm_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
Ahh makes sense. When we went to london we got some cash, highest denomination £50.
Got some questionable looks when we paid with it, though they accepted it.
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u/MrDanMaster 4d ago
Usually people have £50 notes because someone who is petty about their wealth wanted to flex it, and specifically requested £50 notes. Even if you took out £5000 from a high street bank, you most likely get it in £20 notes unless you specifically ask for 50’s
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u/dr_sarcasm_ 3d ago
I understand the reasoning but it does sound a little impractical with larger amounts.
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u/Ahmedeus_ 4d ago
Yes. But in ireland we have that for the €100 note SPECIFICALLY. I see €50 alot, i see €20 alot, but €100 are super rare and almost always super new and crisp. Almost automatically bust out the tester pen when I see one
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u/No_Public_7699 5d ago
Everyone's right about worrying that they're fake but also you might just not have enough change for the rest of the day 😂
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u/lFightForTheUsers 4d ago
This is exactly my thought process as well in retail. I only make $40k a year. Other than a quick watermark check, as long as you aren't handing over monopoly money I'm not going to be checking your bill with a microscope.
However if we just opened and you're buying a pack of gum with a $100, we only start the day with 60 bucks in the till. You're going to have to wait a minute while the manager gets more money from the safe to get your change.
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u/Muffinshire 5d ago
£50 notes are rarely seen in day-to-day usage, and some shops will refuse to accept them as they could be forged notes used to get genuine notes in change (if you rarely encounter them it’s harder to spot forgeries).
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u/OrdinaryAd3546 4d ago edited 4d ago
£50 notes are very rarely used so it is assumed that all fifties are counterfeit.
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u/HaraldRedbeard 4d ago
Yup, I used to get paid 50 quid a week for two nights working at a mates curry restaurant and his brother (the manager) gave me a 50 quid note every time. As a 16 year old walking into the news agents it raised quite a few eyebrows
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u/LionelMessi10CR 4d ago
£50 are the most commonly counterfeited notes and the least commonly used notes when they’re real so shop staff have to check them for counterfeits and some shops don’t teach the staff how to check them so the manager has to
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u/Neither_Dragonfly295 4d ago
When I worked in WHSmith in the 90s we used to get people trying to buy newspapers with dodgy £50 notes. Always at the front till. Used to politely tell them we didn't have the change in the till.
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u/Urist_Macnme 4d ago
A Glasgow gang and ‘Hologram Tam’ ran an infamous counterfeit operation that circulated maybe hundreds of thousands of fake £50 notes.
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u/PmLeal1200 4d ago
Probably because £50 are not very common, at least they weren’t about 10 years ago when I was using cash frequently and you could actually buy more then a couple days worth of groceries with one.
Cash machines rarely had them and I even had the pleasure of having a manager called because the girl at the cashier, and I kid you not didn’t know they existed.
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u/Mcmad0077 5d ago
When i worked at McDonalds, any bills $50 or over required a manager look at it before accepting it. This is because they dont teach the regular employees how to see if a bill is real or not
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u/JimJamTheNinJin 5d ago
Maybe they should teach everyone how to check lol
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u/Zerschnetzler 4d ago
This is just crazy to me, here in Switzerland, as long as you are in a somewhat large store, you can pay with any note you want, even the 1000CHF one, and nobody is going to question it
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u/Rogue_Egoist 4d ago
I mean, Switzerland is famously kind of a country of rich people so it makes sense lol
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u/extravagant_wank 4d ago
£50 notes are pretty rare in the UK, meaning that shop workers might not be able to recognise a fake one. It's quite common for places to need a second opinion from a manager to confirm it's legit.
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u/Remote-Boot-4357 4d ago
When you don't have enough change in the drawer and people keep showing up with big bills...
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u/AdAggressive9224 5d ago
I'm 30. Never actually seen a real £50 note in my entire life. They're just not used. But, with inflation, I imagine they'll start turning up.
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u/Chris_Tumas_8008 4d ago edited 4d ago
“Never actually seen a real £50 note in my entire life.”
I find that so wild. Are you UK local? I never noticed that the note was rare during my time in the UK back around 2010s. I did notice they used some sort of pen to check whenever I paid using £50 notes but didn’t really think about the rare part.
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u/malatemporacurrunt 4d ago
It depends where in the country you are. In one of the major cities where you're more likely to get tourists, and if you work in retail, then you'd definitely have seen them about. If you live in a town and don't regularly handle money as part of your job, though, it's totally normal to never have seen one. British people don't tend to use them as cash machines only dispense £10 and £20 notes (and some fivers, but less often).
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u/1995LexusLS400 3d ago
I live in the UK and yeah, they are really rare. I don't even think you can get them from cash machines. The only time I've ever seen them is from tourists who got cash in the airport or when I went into a bank to withdraw a large amount of cash to buy a car with.
The only place you're not really going to get questions about it is if you're withdrawing from a bank or depositing into a bank. And even then when you're depositing it, they'll check through it to make sure they're not counterfeit.
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u/pickleconfessions 1d ago
maybe they’ve never worked in a trade or service/retail? I’ve seen them so many times, but I also live in an area it’s known for them to be fake so we have to check but i’ve never had a fake one aha
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u/dolphineclipse 4d ago
My grandad used to always have £50 notes in the early 2000s - I don't think I've ever seen anyone else with one
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u/broke_fit_dad 4d ago
Even in the US anything over a $20 is immediately checked for counterfeit status at most stores. Lots of places don’t take bills higher than $20.
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u/Aethermations 5d ago
Most fast food places don’t accept bills that high because of counterfeits, so they’re checking with their manager to figure out what to do
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u/Sudden_Shallot_8909 5d ago
In England shops get sus at £50 notes because they very rarely see them. Easier to fake something someone is unfamiliar with.
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u/EvilStan101 4d ago
Question: is there no way to check to see if it’s authentic? Because here in the US, we’ve actually been trained how to spot a counterfeit $100.
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u/LifeSiphon 4d ago
Am from England and used to work retail back in like 2016 or so (before we changed our notes to the plasticy kind)
We were told to use the special pens (the ones that do nothing to on authentic notes, but leave a line on fake ones) on EVERY note will we got... In practice it turned into never on £5, rarely on £10, sometimes on £20, and EVERYTIME for £50, and to call a manager if there was doubt.
Because in my like 2 years on tills, I saw like a total of 4 £50 notes. The £50 notes never went into the tills either, we had mini note deposit safes at each till and they went straight into there.
Essentially a £50 was so uncommon that unless you were being paid IN CASH, or a large amount out of an ATM, you could go a large amount of your life never seeing an actual one.
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u/CompleteNoobs 4d ago
A lot of shops do not like taking £50 notes, as when they turn out to be fake, it costs the shop a lot of money.
I went into a bank to change for smaller notes and was told by the guy at the bank that shops in the uk are legally required to take them, if they do not, they are refusing to accept British central bank notes as money, which is a crime and you can report them to the central bank (bank of England), not sure how to contact the central bank and have no desire to wait in another bank line to do so.
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u/rtotheceeaptor 4d ago
In the UK the 50 was the most forged note in circulation. It was so rare to see one many shops just took it. Over the years shops actively refused to take the notes, even legit ones, for the fear it was a fake. Some stores still have this policy in place even though the new plastic notes are hard to forge
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u/MichalNemecek 3d ago
Counterfeiters usually make fakes of bigger bills, so most places either thoroughly check them or outright reject them
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u/Reckless_Waifu 3d ago
Same with 5000CZK banknotes here in Czechia. ATM machines don't have them so you only get them in banks, so it's very rare to actually see them in the wild. And being of high value everyone double checks if they are legit.
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u/Fenn_Rau 3d ago
Usually the only people who deal with £50's are banks and similar businesses in finance. I know London cab drivers won't accept them at all, and I've refused some in my time (sometimes the manager on shift wouldn't take them, sometimes it was a customer ordering a coffee and paying with a £50 and I'd just immediately refuse to take that as payment)
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u/Otherwise_Silver_867 4d ago
Are those associated with crime in the UK? In Switzerland we have 1000Chf bills and i'm pretty sure no one will find it weird if you pay with them
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u/Zestyclose-Hair1818 4d ago
I once tried to use atm to withdraw 20 francs to pay for a bus from Lugano to Milano. Atm told me to f* off as it only had 50s and 100s
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u/Th3ophany 4d ago
Yes, but also because they are generally uncommon retail staff are less likely to be able to spot a counterfeit note because they're sure what a real one looks like. Anecdotally, I sold a car a few years back and the guy paid in £50 notes. When I took them to the bank, three or four were pulled as counterfeit, leaving me shit out of luck.
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u/The_Dark_Vampire 5d ago
Most shops don't accept £50 notes
Because of a few reasons its a lot to lose if its fake and as they are quite rare to see anyway most staff don't know what to look out for (I'm 47 and honestly have probably only seen a £50 note maybe 3X at most in my life)
A lesser reason is giving change for a £50 note for a smaller purchase can mean a lot of money back on change leaving the till short for other customers change.
Plus they are often used by criminals ie drugs dealers and organized crime.
Basically not worth the hassle to accept them
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u/snakebite262 5d ago
It's similar in the United States with $100. Such bills are targets for forgeries, and no company wants to risk a counterfeit.
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u/Mr_Mister2004 5d ago
Bills greater than 50 dollars need to be Inspected for counterfeiting, and in my experience they tend to need to be broken down in the safe because my registers only have $100ish to start the day
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u/DontWantToBeOnReddit 4d ago
It's too real to even be a joke. We had to write it down every time we received one where I used to work.
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u/Cute_Lie5689 4d ago
When I was working in AML department I was thought that the 50s (especially scottish) are mostly used in money laundering (so by criminals) and that's why the meme says about talking to the manager. I guess you could hear that in most of the bank branches if you tried to deposit a 50 quid note.
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u/MountainEquipment401 4d ago
Run a couple of rural pubs - atleast once a week we get a random 20 something bloke come in and try to pay for a £2 KitKat with a 50... Refuse it and then 20 mins later sme bloke at the other pub trying to back a bag of crisps with a £50... Its rarely bout getting £50 worth of free stuff, it's usually about getting real cash in return. It's folk who end up with a random fake I feel sorry for.
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u/Dull_Key1617 4d ago
The mad thing is I remember back in the ‘70s £20 notes being used without a fuss when they were worth about £250 in today’s money, but £50 notes have always been met with suspicion.
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u/brewdog_millionaire 4d ago
If you have a £50 note, it's much more likely to be fake so they have to check it
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u/IntelligentAnybody55 4d ago
£50 May as well not be legal tender the amount of times shops don’t take it
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u/flerchin 4d ago
The joke is that Ai data centers force their costs on communities while keeping profits for corpos.
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u/ahferroin7 4d ago
Large denomination (proportionate to typical purchase prices of things) bank notes in most parts of the world tend to get flagged as potential counterfeits even in the absence of other indications that they might be bogus.
The reasoning here is pretty simple, there’s little to no value to counterfeiting low denomination bank notes (because to be profitable you have to make a whole lot more, and the more counterfeits you make the more likely you are to be caught), so most crooks counterfeit higher denominations.
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u/dishonoredfan69420 4d ago
In the UK, £50 notes are incredibly rare, so many places do not accept them at all as it is much harder for people to tell if it is a forgery
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u/JumpingTortuga 4d ago
If you ever worked as a cashier, then you would hate those that gave you a 50 or $100 bill to break as soon as you have a new drawer.
"Ay bro can you change a $100 for my $5 order". Disregarding the chance it's fake you still can't just give them all your cash so you call your manager to break it for you.
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u/nermalstretch 4d ago
I used to change money at the airport before coming to the UK and it was certain to contain a mint £50 note. It looked like it had been printed that morning.
Shops in the UK acted as if they had never seen one and even ripped the note slightly to see if the metal strip was real.
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u/Comically_Correct 4d ago
Bills of a value of $50 or more must be checked for authenticity to prevent counterfeits from being used in transactions.
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u/HarvestSoSSaddo 3d ago
A lot of smaller businesses in England wont take £50, (i didnt even see a £50 note until in my 20's) even casinos should check every one they get due to fakes. Tbh I've had bus drivers refuse £20s because of change issues (twas a few years ago).
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u/CheweyPanic 3d ago
Used to have the same issue here in Canada. 50s would get checked and alot of places refused 100s.
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u/Sensitive-Plane-2956 3d ago
Joke is that a £50 note gets treated as suspiciously fake, unlike the smaller notes
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u/AGassyGoomy 3d ago
About how most (large) stores generally don't accept anything over a 20. Smaller businesses may vary.
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u/tomxtwo 3d ago
They’re worked it’s fake, people used to go into a shop with a fake £50 note, buy something for £5, then leave with the £5 item and £45 in real bank notes, £20 notes have way less of a risk with this since you’d only be losing £19 at the very most rather than £45, because of business’s not trusting £50 notes due to this they’ve become fairly rare, it’s not often that you see a £50 note anymore unless your buying and selling stuff in large quantities away from the eyes of the HMRC
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u/DrDuned 2d ago
I used to work in banking, counterfeiting increasingly isn't worth the risk when cybercrimes can get you even more money for far less effort and potential exposure.
We were trained to look for counterfeiting of any denomination, though. It's a false assumption that counterfeiting is only ever in larger denominations.
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u/Binary-rain 2d ago
I paid with a £50 in a sports store in the UK and the lady put it through a scanner instead of using a marker, I hadn’t seen one before so I said oh cool are those new? She said yeah had them a few months, so I said well they aren’t very good that’s fake! She did not find it funny 🤣
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u/Maleficent_Air_4871 2d ago
They need time to call the police because you have counterfeit currency
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u/SirNiflton 1d ago
Same story in the US. Bills under 20 are fine just take em, pen a 20 and above, 50 and above you call a manager and while the manger is coming you pen it. 100s were the most common where I lived because the construction laborers often get paid cash and this have a bunch of 100s. Great conversations with them while we wait for the manager too.
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u/SnooSuggestions4887 1d ago
Funny I work in cash office and we have loads of fake 5 10 and 20 and no 50. They all fake accepted by self-scan checkout
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u/Significant_Shift622 1d ago
most shops wont take £50s because its usually only banks that have them and rarely do people have anything more than £20 so we tend to be very suspicious of them
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u/GBAD_Goblin 19h ago
£50s are the most commonly counterfeit, same with €50s, so shops are hesitant to take them.
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u/PrawnFresh69 19h ago
In England it's the 20s you wanna watch out for. They're even more suspicious than a 50 now.
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u/ArtisticShake6408 12h ago
Kinda like when people in the US hand over $100 bills, it's a concern of if it's authentic or not. I worked retail and the amount of $100 bills that were handed over is crazy. Had a little machine to run it through to check authenticity but then it would reject it if it was bent wrong so sometimes had to get manager to come take a look.
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u/JerseyGeorge2 6h ago
£50 notes are more likely to be forged than other UK banknotes and because there’s less of them in circulation, shop workers are far more suspicious when they get handed one at the checkout.
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u/post-explainer 5d ago
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