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General discussion

Remember the Canadian "spy coin" story?

by JP Bill May 7, 2007 12:11AM PDT

Harmless ?poppy quarter? led to spy coin warnings

WASHINGTON (AP) - The surprise explanation behind the U.S. government's sensational but false warnings about mysterious Canadian spy coins is the harmless poppy quarter, the world's first colourized coin.

The were so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them.

The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," said once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails.

The 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy inlaid over a maple leaf. The quarter is identical to the coins pictured and described as suspicious in the contractors' accounts.

The supposed nano-technology actually was a conventional protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red colour from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.

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2 Posts

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(NT) Nope, I don't remember that.

by EdH May 7, 2007 12:46AM PDT

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if I ask the same question tomorrow

by JP Bill May 7, 2007 12:59AM PDT

The correct response from you would be yes, unless you don't.

After checking to see when I made previous posts on this subject it was shortly after the new year and many people were not here.

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