Counterfeit - 1 Pound - Elizabeth II 3rd portrait; Scottish Lion

The round pound ran from 1983 to 2017 and by the end of its life the Royal Mint estimated that roughly one in thirty in circulation was fake — the highest counterfeit rate of any modern British coin. The 1993 Scottish reverse was one of the most frequently replicated annual types, partly because the design's fine detail gave cover to crude die work. Counterfeit detection focused heavily on edge lettering alignment and die axis, both notoriously inconsistent on fakes of this period.