This interesting 50 Ringgit piece landed on my table some weeks back. It's not mine but I was asked to take a look at it. Here's the high resolution photo of the reverse :
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| Fig. 1 : Malaysian RM50 Ringgit, Reverse |
Can you see the very faint extra digit on the bottom right?
For those who collect fancy number banknotes, they will know that the only way the digit at the back can only happen when the serial number reaches ten million or 10000000. And as far as I know for that last piece in each prefix, the last digit "0" is manually inserted, not printed by the numbering machine. So there is absolutely no way an extra digit is going to appear in the location above, what more it is also misaligned; the last digit is always a zero, not eight.
So at the first glance this piece looks suspicious already!
Now if you check the last digit really up close, here's what you'll see :
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| Fig. 2 : Comparing the 2 digits of "8" under a microscope |
The one on the left is the last digit and the one on the right is another "8" for the same banknote. Notice the difference in the height and width?
That's the dead giveaway that the extra "8" is added after the banknote left the factory.
So folks, please be careful when you come across any such "error notes".
Happy Collecting !
