oa Counterfeiters’ Molds for Casting Polish Coins of 1923–1924 from Lviv Region

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Counterfeiters’ Molds for Casting Polish Coins of 1923–1924 from Lviv Region, Page 1 of 1

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This article sheds light on the casting molds discovered in the Lviv region of Ukraine that were used during the Second Polish Republic for counterfeiting coins. Coins for state-wide circulation in denominations of 20 and 50 groszy, and 1 and 2 złoty, served as prototypes for counterfeiting. In total we investigated four different casting molds: the unusual mold for casting counterfeit 50 grosz coins from the year 1923 made from a German thermostat; the unusual mold for casting counterfeit 50 grosz coins from 1923 made from the door of a furnace; half of a mold used for producing a counterfeit 1923 1-zloty coin; and half of a counterfeiter’s mold for a 2-zloty coin from 1934.

We suggest that a well-organized criminal group carrying out coin counterfeiting could have operated in Galicia from the mid-1920s up to the outbreak of World War II. This also appears to be confirmed by the criminal cases on the investigation and punishment of counterfeiters in the archives of Ukraine.

All of the tools studied here for making counterfeit coins differ in their quality, indicating that these tools belonged to different persons with different skills in metal processing — from very inventive constructions to more simple ones that most likely were not used in the process of coin counterfeiting.