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Questions About Money Pens

grayman

Happy-go-lucky Heretic
grayman
Joined
Apr 24, 2006
Messages
5,655
I was speaking to a waitress at a diner near where I work and noticed that she was now using one of those marking pens used to check for counterfeits. We got to wondering, do they really work, and if so, how?

Any help here? Thanks.
 
The pens are filled with iodine, and they do detect whether a sheet of paper is high-quality or cheap, since the cheaper grades of paper are filled with starch.

The theory behind using the pens to discover counterfeit money is that counterfeiters are cheap and use cheap paper. While it's hard to get your hands on the special grade of paper US currency is printed on, it is not so hard to get a high quality grade that will not trigger the pens.
 
I found this article, which goes into detail about how the pens work. I have no idea how reliable this is, however.

eta: This counterfeit penWP article has references to a magician called James Randi who calls into question the efficacy of the device.
 
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If you know a person will use a pen offer them a blank piece of paper the size as a note. Insist it is real money. Tell them to test it with their pen. It will then pass the test. Demand an apology.

PS It will pass the test because you are using the right type of paper. One without starch.
 
In fairness (a word that, given the purpose of these boards, is dismayingly absent much of the time), the advertized purpose of the pens is to indicate bills which might be suspect.

They do work, and I have never seen a claim by anyone other than debunkers that they are intended to be, or are, 100% accurate.
 
I once worked at a bookstore where the manager had seen such pens in action, but lacked a few significant pieces of data about them. She issued all the register staff ordinary markers.

I fear I didn't spread the mission of skepticism and wisdom and knowledge because, after all, it was just too damned funny.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I once worked at a bookstore where the manager had seen such pens in action, but lacked a few significant pieces of data about them. She issued all the register staff ordinary markers.

I fear I didn't spread the mission of skepticism and wisdom and knowledge because, after all, it was just too damned funny.
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Maybe she wasn't expecting you to check for forgeries with them, she just want you to write "911-truth" on one side and "universalseed.com" on t'other.
 
Beady said:
In fairness (a word that, given the purpose of these boards, is dismayingly absent much of the time), the advertized purpose of the pens is to indicate bills which might be suspect.

They do work, and I have never seen a claim by anyone other than debunkers that they are intended to be, or are, 100% accurate.
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If by work you mean:
"So far no counterfit bill, not even one, has ever been detected by use of a pen of this type", then you are quite correct.

That information, by the way, is form the secret service from 2001.
 
When I see discussions like this I'm reminded of the difference between a deterrent and a preventative. A lock is a deterrent, it will deter some people but those who really want something will simply kick the door in. These pens are deterrents. What the shop keeper hopes is that Joe Blow, who just made some 20's on his HP 5500 will see the pen in use and chicken out at the last minute. It deterred him. Of course, if he were a more hardened criminal it wouldn't sway him but as the case with the lock, it at least deterred some.
 
TobiasTheCommie said:
If by work you mean:
"So far no counterfit bill, not even one, has ever been detected by use of a pen of this type", then you are quite correct.

That information, by the way, is form the secret service from 2001.
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I can confirm that as of August, 2006, the US Secret Service -- which, btw, is the organization in the United States responsible for dealing with counterfeiting -- has not revised its opinion upwards.

Basically, if you want to determine "bills which might be suspect," your accuracy is just as good if you use Tarot card divination.
 
Beady said:
They do work, and I have never seen a claim by anyone other than debunkers that they are intended to be, or are, 100% accurate.
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There was a case in the UK a couple of years ago where a major retailer (Maplin I believe) was fined for selling counterfeit detection pens and claiming that they where 100% reliable. I'll try and dig out a source.
 
drkitten said:
I can confirm that as of August, 2006, the US Secret Service -- which, btw, is the organization in the United States responsible for dealing with counterfeiting -- has not revised its opinion upwards.

Basically, if you want to determine "bills which might be suspect," your accuracy is just as good if you use Tarot card divination.
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Actually, if you just want to find suspect bills, I think Tarot cards might be better. I figure that in the multitude of false positives it's going to accidently pick out an actual counterfeit bill some of the time.
 
SwissSkeptic said:
Here's Randi's take on those pens:

And here's one of my favourite anecdotes from Randi concerning the counterfeit pens. :D
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This is amusing, but I sort of get the impression that without intentional tampering with spray starch, the pens would work just fine, which sort of calls into question the ethics of tampering with legal tender just for the sake of making some obscure point about how counterfeit-detecting pens can be tricked into signaling a false positive, doesn't it?
 
I agree that it might not be the ethical thing to do, but mainly because of the potential trouble it causes to unsuspecting people whose money is tested with those pens. However, assuming that the statement "So far no counterfit bill, not even one, has ever been detected by use of a pen of this type" is correct, I don't think Randi's (or anyone else's) tampering is the reason for the failure of the pens.
 
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drkitten said:
I can confirm that as of August, 2006, the US Secret Service -- which, btw, is the organization in the United States responsible for dealing with counterfeiting -- has not revised its opinion upwards.
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You can confirm it? Don't take this the wrong way, but I've never before seen you claim expertise in this area. Perhaps you can supply a link?
 
rjh01 said:
Is it legal to deface money in the USA?
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Define "deface." There's an online outfit called "Where's George?" that you can join. You register the serial numbers of $1 bills in an online database, stamp each of the bills with the URL of the site, and put the bills back in circulation. When someone gets one of these bills, he's supposed to enter into the database where and when he got the bill; you can check into the site and track your currencey's travels about the country and world.

Anyway, the US Treasurey has stated that it doesn't have a problem with this kind of defacement.
 
The topic has been discussed a few times in the Weekly Commentary forum.
 
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