Do money check pens work?

When the pen is used to mark genuine bills, the mark is yellowish or colourless. Such pens are most effective against counterfeit notes printed on a standard printer or photocopier paper. The chemical properties of US banknotes before 1960 make marking pens useless.

What is the marker test for money?

A counterfeit detector pen contains a solution of iodine. This iodine reacts with the starch molecules that are present in a normal, wood-based paper, to leave a dark brown mark. This black mark indicates that the bill is fake.

How does a counterfeit money pen work?

A counterfeit money pen contains a solution that detects starch in counterfeit paper money. In the United States, legitimate paper currency is not bound with starch in the manner that standard paper is and, therefore, contains either little or no starch at all.

How do you use counterfeit pen?

One method for obtaining “legitimate” paper that will fool any counterfeit pen is to wash a small denomination bill in bleach and use the resulting paper to print a larger denomination bill. When a counterfeit pen is swiped over one of these bills it will appear as legitimate. Another method is to obtain actual currency paper.

How do you check counterfeit money?

Another way to tell if money is counterfeit is to look for special security measures built into real paper currency. Holding the bill up to a light source should reveal a watermark, essentially a shadow image depicted in the center. This watermark is created during the paper making process and cannot be duplicated by a photocopier .

How does a counterfeit detector pen work?

The counterfeit detector pen is extremely simple. It contains an iodine solution that reacts with the starch in wood-based paper to create a black stain. When the solution is applied to the fiber-based paper used in real bills, no discoloration occurs.