I used to worry decades ago before I knew most of the people I deal with in the hobby. I went to Staples and got a bill checking pen. At this point if I did get one I know it would not be on purpose and hard to happen since most bills go through the bank. Passing one on purpose would be stupid. You would be tracked down very quickly since this is taken very seriously.

All the time..... I ask for all 100s and my wife checks them with a counterfeit pen when counting. The buyer may not even know he has one.

You know who would care? The FBI. If you are at my house to buy a game, you’re on camera, and I have a picture of your license plate already offsite before you’ve gotten out of your car. The treasury department and the FBI will find you fairly quickly with that, and will have a much bigger discussion than the game you tried to steal with fake money. They just don’t like that stuff and will want to know where you got the money to trace down who made it. That’s the one thing they take very seriously.

Secret service

You could always buy one of those cheap counterfeit detection pins if you wanted to check them.

I don't sell a ton of pins but I honestly hope nobody is stupid enough to try to pass off counterfeit bills. That's just looking for a world of trouble.

Yes, it sucks...That's the problem with our hobby; you always have that worry in the back of your mind with these high ticket items that we trade in.

I will say that I've met awesome buyers and sellers through pinside, 99.9% of the pinside community are very trust worthy, which is way different than what you might come across on CL or elsewhere...Just be careful and take your time in vetting a buyer.

You could worry yourself to death will all the possibilities that could happen with a large cash transaction in your home. Protect yourself as much as you think is reasonable and hope for the best. Count the cash, look at it, feel it, etc.

Just be careful not to worry too much. You could end up behind bulletproof glass with an elaborate exchange system.

Counterfeit currency detectors are cheap these days. Just get one for peace of mind if it's something you're concerned about.

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/best-counterfeit-money-detectors-4160584

I don't. People with counterfeit bills tend to spend them in busy places on purchases that will give a lot of change with real bills, like busy bars. The cashier will have less time to realize they are fake. There is a much higher chance they will get caught making a large purchase. They won't feel right and if the purchase is say $4,000 you have 40 chances to notice something is up.

I worked in retail in a previous life and learned a counterfeit detecting pen is not a good way to check money. If they bleach a $5 and turn it into a $100 it will pass the pen test. Your better off feeling the money and looking for security features like the vertical strip and proper watermarks. They make UV light tools for this that would be a better bet than a pen, but you can just hold it up to some light and see water marks and strips.

I don't think counterfeit money is a big worry in pinball transactions. Most people are going to get a fat stack of cash right from the bank, but always be aware of whats going on. When you are counting down the money at the transaction pay attention to the bills.

Not at all. In Canada we have plastic bills that (we’re told) are hard to counterfeit. I’d probably be a little cautious with American bills, they’re the most circulated currency on the planet. But as others have said, it’d be pretty stupid to try with a private sale, it’s not like your just another customer in line.

Are you doing the litmus configuration?

I think it would be hilarious if someone pulled out a pen to check notes for a game i bought, but I get it.

I used to be cash only guy but now prefer direct deposit. No hassles and only takes a minute.

i own and work at a busy bar. we have people in our neighborhood who try passing fake’s all the time, so i teach my bartender’s the easy way to detect them. the pen is worthless in many cases. the easiest test is to scratch the presidents collar w your fingernail. on a real bill, it’s made up of ribbed lines and the ink is raised. you can clearly feel it. in my experience, counterfeiters cannot replicate this. even on worn bills, it’s evident.

however, i definitely agree w @herbertbsharp.. people intentionally passing fake’s won’t buy expensive items, just to be left w the daunting task of having to sell them. they go into busy, dark establishments where they can buy something cheap, like a beer or a cup of coffee w a fake $100, and get $97 dollars in real bills as change.

of course, a fake can accidentally get mixed into a stack of real bills in a pinball machine transaction, but that’s where the scratch test can help you out.

LOL your facebook posts are what gave me that example

As others mentioned, the pens definitely do not work on all counterfeits. Real notes will have red and blue micro fibers woven into the paper. Also there is a blacklight reactive strip with micro printing embedded in the note and an offset watermark of the portrait, both of which can be easily spotted by holding the note up to a light. The bumps on the presidents collar are actually micro printed text that can only be made with a printing plate. Large purchases made with counterfeit U.S. $100 notes is more of an issue outside of the country and it's the Secret Service that investigates counterfeiting crimes.

If you sell enough you can get a used cummins bill counter with counterfeit detection built in for $200-300. Note that all the models DO NOT have counterfeit detection built in, so you need to know what you're buying.

Model 4062 - Magnetic Counterfeit Detection
Model 4065 - Magnetic & UV Counterfeit Detection
Model 4068 - No Counterfeit Detection

4065 is the one you want, but also the hardest to get at a good price. Sometimes at surplus auctions they don't know what they have and it goes cheap (that's where I get them) because it looks the same as the other models, the differences are inside. Note that the stickers on the back show what bills it's upgraded to check (new 20s, new 100s, new 5s) so LOOK FOR THEM before you buy. It's almost impossible to get Cummins to update the machine afterwards to the newer bills as a john Q public owner, they're used to dealing with large companies with service contracts, so it's important to make sure the one you're getting will read at least the current newest currency. The rubber parts will likely be hard or gooey and the machine barely or non-functional at those prices as a result, but the rehab parts are maybe $40-50 and then it works great in my experience.

The upside is the machine counts the money while it checks the bills transparently, so everything is counted and checked in seconds.

I have a friend who owns some furniture rental stores. One day, a renter came in and paid with fake $50.00 bills. My friend caught the error and called the renter and said he needed to come back to the store and talk about his payment. I don't know if my friend gave the fake $50.00 bills back but he got real money for the rent.

When I subleased a self-service gas station from my aunt and uncle, they told me if I ever found a fake $20.00 (this was in 1977 when $20.00 still amounted to something) to keep my mouth shut to bury it deep in all the money I would take to the bank in my daily deposits and hope the bank did not catch it. I never got any counterfeits that I know of so it was never an issue.

The thing is if you get stuck with a fake bill and try to do the right thing, the fake bill will be confiscated and the authorities will not replace it with real money. So you are screwed.

Yeah, the right thing to do is call the authorities but if you are not rich the phrase by Lenny Bruce applies: A man is as honest as he can afford to be.

Honestly you can tell most fakes just by the feel.

This.

And this.

I worked in cash control years ago at an amusement park. Every bill that was spent at the park had to go through our hands. We'd get fake bills pretty often, from really awful injet printed ones, to pretty sophisticated bleached $1s and $5s that were reprinted to be larger denominations. In the latter case, the bills pass the counterfeit pen (which is really just iodine. Paper money is made from cotton, and won't turn the iodine black on contact). I've even heard of people treating fake bills with vitamin c to keep the pens from turning black on the bills. So we rarely trusted them. In the cash room, we had bill counters that had magnetic sensors. The inks on bills are very slightly magnetic, and that was pretty much the determining factor of whether the bill was accepted, but it almost never got to that point. It was always pretty easy to spot before it got to that point.

Best way to look for fakes is to either really know your money, and find the small red and blue interwoven threads in the bill, use a blacklight to see the band, or check for a proper watermark on the side of the bill. 9 times out of 10 though, it's really easy to spot a fake just by the feel, and the new blue $100 bills are really hard to fake. I haven't seen a good forgery of one.

At the end of the day though, when making large transactions with people for pinball machines, I absolutely do not worry about counterfeits. Too many chances for you to spot it when you're counting it out on the glass.

I check the bills I get from the bank, as the buyer. Its a lot of large bills in cash, and I am not sure of the bank's procedures for checking - there are always old 100s mixed in with the new ones. I think it's prudent, would not bother me as the buyer at all to have them checked by the seller.

I can tell you I once got a counterfeit $20 bill from my bank's atm. I didn't know it was counterfeit until I spent it somewhere and it was caught by retailler. I was pissed because it came from my bank and I could of got in serious trouble.

And you lost $20.00? Or did the bank make it right?

Bought a beautiful WCS 4 years ago and the lady had a counterfeit pen to use and we both laughed and thought that was great.

Best thing is study up on what bills are made of, and look like, and marks or things they have to make copying near impossible, and feel like, various colors, and who is pictured on them. easy to hold to a light and note watermarks and threads with numbers on them.

You are always your own best defense if you do a little homework.

LTG : )

Don't worry about fake money , worry about the the guy that counts it in front of you with that pen puts it in the envelope seals it puts a rubber band around it then gives it to you. When he is long gone and you get around to opening the envelope there is a bunch of old newspaper inside.

On a side note, (pun intended) each bill weights exactly 1gram. Well it used to anyhow.

I usually buy & sell with pinsiders.
Some of them are counterfeit, but their money is always good.

I see you're a "Breaking Bad" fan....

I don't remember exactly but did throw away the bad bill. I didn't want anything to do with it and no way I could definitively prove it came from the atm. $20 not worth the trouble.

I only accept nickels and dimes. Its the only way to be 100 % sure.

Yeah. That is the trouble with counterfeits. It may get passed around through several different retailers and customers around town. But it like musical chairs. Eventually, it gets found out and the last one holding the bag/bill gets stuck.

Sometimes I get Canadian dimes or other foreign coins in change. Better go back to old days and barter chickens or wheat lol.

But, what if you get a counterfeit chicken ? Could easily be a pigeon with a rubber comb on the head.

Still usable. ( Salmis De Pigeons )

LTG : )