Iron money, mud money, fake money, where did the ancient counterfeit money come from?

Making counterfeit money is a lucrative job. In ancient times, the anti-counterfeiting of coins was not so advanced. Counterfeit money is often confused with real money. Once you learn how to make counterfeit money, it will become a source of money. However, the magic is one foot high and the road is ten feet high. Ancient times also had their own methods of counterfeiting. Because counterfeit money is very harmful, China has been constantly innovating anti-counterfeiting technology in ancient times.

After Qin unified the currency, some people began to forge it. Although it is a capital crime to be caught forging Qin Banliang, the huge profits have attracted many people to try. They make money by smuggling and privately mined ore. Although the fake Qin Banliang still has many defects, in that era when anti-counterfeiting technology was underdeveloped, the fake Qin Banliang could still circulate in the market. Although Qin Shihuang stepped up the investigation, the currency was so strong that it was basically impossible to trace it back to its source.

Although later? Every dynasty used its own methods to crack down on counterfeit money, but counterfeit money still emerged one after another. In order to curb the output of counterfeit money, the government chose raw materials to control counterfeit money. Since the main component of coins is copper, the government monopolized the source of copper and prohibited private mining of copper. Although this method can play a certain role, counterfeiting is a high-risk and high-reward job, and private mining can still be done.

At that time, copper coins were circulating in the market. In order to reduce Chen Ben, counterfeiters did not mine high-purity copper. There are also many impurities in the counterfeit money they synthesized. In order to make huge profits, they also mixed cheap metals such as iron into raw materials to reduce costs. Although the cost of this kind of counterfeit money is extremely low, it was later found that the quality of counterfeit money is very different from that of real money. Because of the high density of copper, the authenticity of coins can be confirmed by their quality. Therefore, when collecting money, ancient businessmen like to weigh their money bags. You can feel real money and counterfeit money when you weigh it. Later, in order to suppress counterfeit money and improve the technical quality of coins, the government adopted a series of difficult technologies such as micro-carving technology to suppress the manufacture of counterfeit money.