Canada’s new plastic $100 bill is all tricked out
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Watch out counterfeiters: Canada is planning to abandon paper money.
This week, our friend to the north introduced the first in its new line of all-plastic notes -- a cool $100 bill made out of a single sheet of plastic polymer and tricked out with all kinds of high-tech security features.
In a statement, the Bank of Canada said that the new notes will last twice as long as paper money and will also be recycled, which makes them generally greener (even though the $100 bill is kind of yellowish in color).
But the real impetus to move to plastic money was making the money more difficult to counterfeit.
A helpful YouTube video (above) put out by the Bank of Canada explains the new security features. For example, a suspicious money taker should note that although the polymer bill is nice and smooth, there should be raised ink on the big number 100, the ‘Bank of Canada’ text and the shoulders of the portrait of Sir Robert Borden, the prime minister of Canada from 1911 to 1920.
There are also two transparent windows on the note -- one small one depicts a frosted maple leaf, the other extends the height of the bill, and has a copy of the portrait toward the top of the window, and an image of a building at the bottom. If you move the bill the colors of the building will change a lot, while the color changes on the portrait are more subtle.
Also, if you look closely at the large tranparent window, you’ll notice it’s dotted with small numbers, and some of those number are reversed.
And finally, there are secret numbers embedded in the maple leaf transparent window that are visible only if you hold the window very close to your eye and point it at a single-point light source.
According to a news release, Canada will introduce plastic $50 notes in March, and plastic $5 and $10 bills will come out by the end of 2013.
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-- Deborah Netburn
