International Currency

As a child, I was always fascinated when I went through my father's collection of international currency. I liked looking at all of the different images and feeling the different textures of paper money and different sized coins. When you become accustomed to seeing your own country's money, money from other countries always seems fake or funny looking.

Another thing I enjoyed about looking at international currency is the different methods each country used to thwart counterfeiters. Of course at the time, I was not aware of counterfeiters, and I just assumed they used watermarks and hidden images to make the money prettier and more interesting. When I compared this money to our American money, our various dollar bills seemed sort of plain and boring.

Travel the World with International Currency

Only recently has the United States begun to utilize anti-counterfeit techniques found for years in international currency. For years people have heard about looking for a spider in a dollar bill to determine whether it is real. And almost every dot on that dollar looked like a spider to me. Today, we can hold our money up to the light and see watermarks and security threads that tell us what we are holding is real legal tender.

When we compare the numerous similar features of international currency with our own currency, we see evidence that money is a universal language. Each country borrows features from another and adapts them to fit its needs. When we see all of the security features international currencies possess, we unfortunately also realize that counterfeiting is a problem no matter what country you may be in.