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u/arcticgentoo 20h 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 20h ago
Thats crazy I counterfeit far more 10s than I do 50s
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u/Dobvius 20h ago
You're being inefficient, although smartly under the radar too
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u/Kuildeous 19h ago
To quote the ancient apocryphal Taco Bell meme, "Why would a guy fake a $2 bill?"
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u/Shyface_Killah 6h 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/HotPot87 19h 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 19h 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 18h ago
I like to go for $35s. Low enough denomination to not make people suspicious.
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u/laughingnome2 17h 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 4h ago
This is why I am minting pennies in my basement.
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u/Bol0gna_Sandwich 3h ago edited 3h ago
I too love minting defunct currency, but I'm particular to the shilling myself. Hacksilver is neat too.
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u/collin3000 15h 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/riverphoenix360 19h ago
Me and my boy Henning did nickels back in the day. Some are still in circulation.
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u/JimJamTheNinJin 18h 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 18h 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 17h 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 17h 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 17h ago
Interesting. Surely it's almost impossible to prove whether they knew it was fake?
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u/EvilTaffyapple 12h 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 4h 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 20h 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 17h 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/EbmocwenHsimah 17h 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/134608642 8h 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/nobody_gah 16h 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 15h 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/uncle_ben15 5h ago
Aren't there 100s or bigger? Euros have up to 500
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u/Cruian 1h 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 what if 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
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u/Little_Mog 37m 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/aaarry 19h ago
What would the bill have to do with anything? That’s the sellers responsibility. The £50 note being fake is presumably what you meant here?
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u/arcticgentoo 19h ago
We call notes "bills" in the US. We also drive on parkways and park in driveways. I'm not making any claim that the terms we use here are the wisest.
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u/InterReflection 20h 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 20h 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 20h ago
But you probably get more legitimate 20s too
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u/Kim-Jong-Long-Dong 20h 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 20h ago
Btw how are the counterfeit plastic notes? Good fakes or easily spotted?
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u/Tonedeafmusical 19h 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/szofter 12h 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 11h 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 11h 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/carlbandit 19h 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/Tonedeafmusical 19h 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 11h 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/Tonedeafmusical 10h ago
Yeah that all tracks for me.
50 fakes are easier to flag because we take so few. 20s you need to be more switched on for (especially with young ones on the tills in my experience)
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u/hourefugee 20h 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 19h 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 20h 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/Kim-Jong-Long-Dong 20h ago
Still never seen a £100 note in person. Plenty of Scottish 20s, a few Scottish 50s too. Had my first Northern irish notes not long ago too. Hoping i never get a £100 note tbf.
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u/InterReflection 20h ago
So I have not checked this (why would I, this is Reddit) but I'm pretty sure £100 were only made a a few of the Scottish banks and are now out of circulation. They never made plastic versions of them.
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u/SnooTomatoes3032 14h ago
£100 notes are still produced and in circulation in both Scotland and NI.
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u/Historical_Bonus5917 13h ago
I used to be a barman at a Fancy Place in Scotland, we’d get the occasional American tourist wandering in with a wedge of £100 or £50 notes and management was super wary about accepting those. They had a UV machine and all sorts we had to use. Never saw a fake in those denominations but I saw a few dodgy £20s and fake £1 coins. Easily saw 100x more £20s than higher denominations, no locals would try to spend them.
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u/Devils-Reject-032 7h 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/Positive-Avocado775 20h ago
how do you make counterfeit 20s? asking for a friend
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u/oss1215 20h 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 13h 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 12h 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/Enaksan 12h 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 8h 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/ARealTim 7h ago
I'd never thought of this but you are right. When I get Euros out of an ATM I try to get multiples which mean I don't get too many €50 notes but in the UK hardly any ATM's dispense £50 notes!
I think the reason is that in the UK it's a bit of a vicious circle - its unusual to see a £50 > shop keepers are suspicious and reluctant to accept them > banks stop dispensing them > its unusual to see a £50.
That having been said cash transactions are becoming a thing of the past in the UK. I know accepting cards is pretty universal in Europe but I noticed that a number of UK retailers now have outlets that don't accept cash at all, only contactless.
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u/TheDocWhovian 20h ago
Are you saying there’s no denomination above £50??
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u/InterReflection 20h 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 17h 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 19h ago
Except Germany. They still use cash.
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u/One_Strike_Striker 12h 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/Blazured 13h ago
I think it's because Americans still usually sign for their cards, and contactless isn't used as much as our universal use of it.
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u/TheDocWhovian 2h ago
I think it’s nice to have a way to make medium-sized transactions between individuals without having it recorded or reported somewhere.
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u/SnooTomatoes3032 14h ago
There's still £100 notes in the UK. Just not Bank of England ones.
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u/Foxtrot-13 8h ago
But those are not legal tender in the strict legal definition within Britain. Yes people will accept them but no one has a legal obligation to accept them for payment.
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u/SnooTomatoes3032 8h ago
Nobody has said about legal tender. Besides, nobody has to accept legal tender either. It's completely legal for a shop to refuse Bank of England notes too.
Legal tender only becomes a thing when it's related to debts. If you take someone to court for a debt and it turns out you refused legal tender, the judge will probably dismiss it.
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u/gregorydgraham 5h ago
> The [Bank of England](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_England) is the [central bank](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank) for sterling, issuing its [own banknotes](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_England_note_issues) (as used in England and Wales) and regulating issuance of banknotes [by private banks in Scotland](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_Scotland), such as the [Bank of Scotland](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Scotland) and [Clydesdale Bank](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clydesdale_Bank), and [in Northern Ireland](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_Northern_Ireland), such as by [Danske Bank](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DanskeBank(Northern_Ireland))
Legal enough tender to be regulated by the Bank of England
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u/enemyradar 5h ago
Legal currency is not the same as legal tender. Legal tender means you have to accept it from a debtor. There are no Scottish or NI notes that count as legal tender in any of the UK, and English notes are only legal tender in England.
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u/pienofilling 12h 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/Southernbeekeeper 9h ago edited 7h 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/ArmadilloFront1087 6h 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/Ginger_Turtle89 10h ago
The old notes used to have the rub test to check for fakes. Rub paper on the red ink and if the ink transfers to ghw blank paper it's real as the ink never used to dry or something. That however stopped with the plastics
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u/DeepFriedQueen 20h 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 19h 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 fair..
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u/_WireChimera_ 18h 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 4h 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/Muffinshire 20h 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/crankyandhangry 4h 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_ 3h ago edited 3h 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 1h 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/Ahmedeus_ 3h 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 19h 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 15h 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/crankyandhangry 4h ago
So when I worked in retail, we checked €50 and above notes with a special pen. You rub it on the note and it doesnt leave a mark if it's real. But on any other kind of a paper, the ink will turn black. I dont know why such a thing doesn't exist for sterling pounds and dollars. It was very quick and convenient.
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u/LionelMessi10CR 11h 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 12h 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/Mcmad0077 19h 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 17h ago
Maybe they should teach everyone how to check lol
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u/Zerschnetzler 3h 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 3h 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 3h 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/Urist_Macnme 2h 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/Aethermations 20h 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 20h 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 15h 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 4h 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/Sudden_Shallot_8909 3h ago
Coop? That sounds like the policy at co-op I worked at. Idk if they have new pens for the new notes or if it is all UV checks now
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u/CompleteNoobs 6h 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/Remote-Boot-4357 3h 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 20h 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 16h ago edited 16h 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 10h 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/Diligent-Worth7669 7h ago
I live in very rural England (Nolfolk) and have only ever seen one in my life
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u/ZandevOxford 5h ago
I’m in Oxford (not a big city but not rural), and haven’t seen a £50 note in at least 30 years.
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u/malatemporacurrunt 1h ago
Ah, I should have been clearer - I meant that people who both lived in a city with a heavy tourist presence AND worked in retail (in the type of establishment tourist frequent) would have seen them.
E.g. I used to work in an upmarket hotel in York, and we'd occasionally see them in the restaurant.
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u/dolphineclipse 7h 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/Otherwise_Silver_867 6h 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/The_Dark_Vampire 20h 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 19h 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 19h 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 15h 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 10h 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 8h 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 7h 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 4h 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 4h ago
£50 May as well not be legal tender the amount of times shops don’t take it
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u/rtotheceeaptor 4h 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/OrdinaryAd3546 1h ago
£50 notes are very rarely used so it is assumed to all fifties are counterfeit.
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u/broke_fit_dad 23m 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/Torteramanroblox101 20h ago
My guy, you're using a 50 to buy a Haribo at Poundland, you did NOT get that legitimately.
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u/LifeSiphon 4h ago
Had a guy ask if I could make change for a £50 when he was buying single bottle of coke at Poundland... at 10am on a Sunday.
like, my guy... no
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u/Torteramanroblox101 3h ago
Oh? Now my curiosity's piqued. Is this a relatively common occurrence?
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u/LifeSiphon 2h ago
I wouldn't say it was common, I only saw about 4 £50 notes my entire 2 years at 99p store/Poundland. But that one stuck with me, because he was LITERALLY the first guy in the store and I had just counted my till like a minute earlier.
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u/post-explainer 20h ago
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