SPURIOUS COINS.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 274, 24 May 1907, Page 4

SPURIOUS COINS.

A MANUFACTURING PLANT. A number of counterfeit coins and a plant for manufacturing thorn were found in a building in Cuba street, Wellington, by Detectives Broberg and Williams The premises were occupied by Henry Peacock, engraver, who is vuvr under arrest for a criminal offence against his daughter. The offence is alleged to have taken place at the premises in question, and it vas while they were being examined that the detectives cam across the coins, etc. The find consisted of five or six plaster of paris moulds for making spurious half-crowns and half-sover-eigns, a small crucible for melting metal, an apparatus connected with the gas supply for heating the crucible, some half-crowns and half-sover-eigns in course of manufacture, and a. number of finished articles. Both the half-crowns and the half-sover-eigns are made of the same material. It appears to be lighter and softer than silver, and, instead of ringing, makes a dull thud when dropped on a table. An electric battery and certain liquids found on the premises lead the police to believe 1 that the half-sov-ereigns were coloured on the premises. Some of these counterfeits are gold coloured, and others just out of the moulds are white. The engraving on the coins to an unsuspecting person looks all right, but when one looks into it he sees that the characters are not sharply cut. They bear the same relation to the engraving on a genuine coin as a Shotograph taken from an old print bes to the original photo. Here and there flaws may _be detected round the rims of the coins, and there is evidence that they have been remedied with a file. On the whole, however, the counterfeit, in the opinion of the police, is a very good one. Peacock until recently kept a billiard saloon. He is to be brought before the Court in connection with the find next Monday. — Post.