Heads I Win - The True Story of David Gee, Australia's Most Audacious Coin Forger

by Jeffrey Watson, Don Thomas, Jack Bennett

David Gee, a world authority on stamps and Australian colonial coins, and an expert forger with over seventy aliases, eluded the security systems of Australia's most prestigious museums and libraries. He removed rare and valuable gold coins from the Royal Australian Mint, and plundered the Dixson Collection of the State Library of New South Wales, replacing priceless gold coins with counterfeits made from original dies stolen from the Collection.

Detective Chief Inspector Don Thomas battled bureaucratic red tape, frustrating false leads and the forger's cunning before bringing Gee to trial, after tracking his activities through houses in Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, London, Belfast and Zurich.

Heads I Win captures the excitement of the chase while exploring the fascinating world of the numismatist and forger who, in the words of his sentencing judge, "stole part of Australia's heritage".

175 pages, Hardcover

Published December 31, 1986

About the author

Jeffrey Watson (1942 – 22 February 2023) was a British-born Australian journalist, author, broadcaster and documentary film maker with 40 years in the business. Best known as a presenter on Beyond 2000 which was seen in most countries including the United States and the USSR, Jeff Watson has also contributed to This Day Tonight, Four Corners, Towards 2000 (a program which he devised in 1979), Holiday, Sixty Minutes, Beyond 2000 and Getaway. He also had an interest in aviation, producing numerous documentaries on the subject.

Jeff Watson co-wrote Heads I Win about Australian coin forgery and his book, The Last Plane out of Berlin, a biography of Sidney Cotton , published by Hodder in 2002, has been reprinted five times. Jeff Watson has also written and presented corporate videos, presented television commercials and made a film on carbon dioxide storage for a consortium of American mining companies.

In 1991 Jeff was made a Chevalier of the Order of Merit by then President Mitterrand of France, in recognition of his services to France and the many films he has made on French developments in science and technology, in particular, aviation. Jeff served two years as a Trustee of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and was an Australia Day Ambassador in 1995-6-7. He was an honorary and is now a full member of the Spitfire Association. In 2003, he was created an honorary Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

As an aviator Jeff has flown, or flown in more than fifty types of aircraft including the Harrier Jump-Jet, the F/A 18 Super Hornet, the English Electric Lightning and the Concorde and has kicked the tyres on the Space Shuttle Challenger.