Next time your at the post office, ask them to weigh it for you. Just make sure others aren't waiting in line for regular postal business and don't make it a habit.
I think its real well worn but shows legitimate wear and I see no signs it's a fake should weigh right around 27 g official weight 27.22g allowing for circulation wear around 27 well worth investing in a scale if your gonna buy raw trades
That won't do any good. Postal scales are accurate to .1 standard oz or about 2.8 grams. Trying to weigh a trade dollar to within almost 3 grams won't tell you much.
If it's off by more than 2.8 grams, it will tell you it's authenticity is in jeopardy. That beats knowing nothing.
You can buy one off the Bay for around $10, and even a set of calibration weights for $5. I did and never looked back, even have a set of calipers.
While that is true...the problem is those scales aren't predictably accurate enough. Yes, they weigh to the 0.1oz, but they also have a degree of error. If they are slightly off (and their smallest unit is 0.1oz)...what they tell you is worthless.
Those scales are weighed and calibrated more often than most others. At the start of each day at a minimum. The scale manufacturers say that the calibration is good for a full week with heavy use, not just the one day the post office recalibrates. The government has the Bureau of Weights and Measures over see the accuracy. They provide the weights used to calibrate the manual scales or to verify digital scales. I'm sure they are more accurate than the comparatively inexpensive units that most collectors have at home. Now if you want to buy one of the gold scales used by the industry, get your pocket book out because you will spend a lot more than a few Trade Dollars will cost. But at what point does it become absurd to keep challenging scale accuracy and do you want the poor guy to go out and invest in an expensive instrument? The OP doesn't have a scale and he is looking for prudent suggestions. The thought is, it remains a starting point for the OP to see if other steps are necessary, not the end all.
That's all well and good...but a scale that is only accurate to 0.1oz is not accurate enough to weigh a coin to determine if it's authentic. Simple as that. The best thing to do is take the coin to a dealer and have them weigh it.
That's all well and good but you were the only one who brought up the degree of error, how much they can be off by. My response was to nothing more than that. Now your back to unit of measure. Two different subjects all together. Simple as that. I hope he does have a coin dealer in easy reach.
My point about degree of error is fairly simple...the smallest unit that the scale has is 0.1oz. If it is off by even it's minimal unit, that's a 3g degree of error. Weighing coins is far more precise than that. So, any error in calibration would make the scale completely useless for coins...on top of the fact that its unit of measure already makes it virtually useless. If he doesn't have a coin dealer near by, a jeweler or even a pawn shop would work too.
First off it won't be off it's minimal unit, not if it's digital. You are thinking of the old mechanical scales. Any error in calibration would even make the coin dealers scale off. In fact, it would make the most expensive precise instrument in the world off if calibrated wrong. The scales are calibrated electronically, by computer, to take human error out of the picture. A good jeweler's scale can even measure dust and should be cleaned each time it is used.
