With most of the herd thundering to do the early flip or get into high-grade Early Release slabs, what about the lowball collectors? I'm toying with the idea of generating what would surely be the greatest rarity of all -- a heavily circulated gold Kennedy half. Not truly circulated in commerce, of course; I'm not ready to spend one at face value, thank you very much. But .9999 gold would surely wear very quickly as a pocket piece. My question: is there any way to generate a worn .9999 gold coin that wouldn't be viewed as a "problem" example? The metal is so very soft that it seems like it would wear in an ugly way -- dents, gouges, and scrapes -- rather than the smooth wear that lowball collectors prefer. There might be someone out there interested in a damaged Kennedy, but I'm not interested in damaging one myself. Does anybody have examples of (say) lowball First Spouse coins, or another circulated pure-gold issue?
If the wear is from being your pocket, then I see no reason for it to receive a details grade. I was day dreaming about turning a clad baseball HOF coin into a pocket piece...
Now, there's a coin that would have an ugly wear pattern! I wonder if it would wear through in the center and turn into a washer before reaching PO01...
For modern issues this is the closest I ever had - No, not pure gold, but that's from 7 years in my pocket. Carried with a pocket knife and several other coins every single day. And as you can see, none of the issues you mentioned. I would grade it no better than low VF. And that is but 1 example, there were several that preceded that one. People have this idea about gold being so soft, but it isn't. Sure, it's soft as compared to other some other metals, but it is still a metal and not near as soft as most seem to think. And it is actually harder than some other metals. But to answer your question all you have to do is look at some old coins. Many European gold coins from the 13th through 16th centuries were made of pure gold. So to see how pure gold wears all you have to do is look at those coins. And if you do you will quickly see that the none of the issues you mentioned were worrisome. Sure you can find some examples with scratches and gouges and dents, but no more than often that you do with any other coin. I used to own quite a few of these old, pure gold coins, but I never bought one in lower than AU condition. So those wouldn't really be a good example to illustrate what you are asking about. But there are plenty out there that are, if you wish to take the time to look them up and see what I am talking about. You could also look up just about any ducat, every country there was in Europe issued ducats for centuries, and they were all (with very few exceptions) made from 98.6% pure gold. And you can easily find them in grades from F on up. And again, none of the issues you mentioned are prevalent.
...and there's the man I was waiting to hear from. I remembered your AGE pocket piece from an earlier thread, but I figured the coin gold alloy was too much harder than pure gold to serve as a good comparison. (After all, that was the point of using that alloy.) The examples of older, pure coins were just the missing link I needed. Still don't know if I'll have the guts to try it myself, though. Too many years of thinking "proof coins are special and you should never, ever do anything to mar them." Thanks, Doug!
Well yes, but only to a limited degree, and only in modern times. You see, the original reason for minting coins of a gold alloy (or silver alloy for that matter) as opposed to pure gold was not to make the coins wear better, but to make more money for the entity minting the coins. It has only been within modern times that wear was ever an issue. Coins, from the moment they came into existence, had a face value based on an equal weight of pure metal. And for almost 2 millennia coins were made, for the most part, of pure metal. Some think that a 1,000 years ago man did not have the technology to refine gold and silver to their pure states. But that simply isn't true. Even a thousand years ago they had the ability to pick whatever level of purity they wanted, down to within 3 decimal points, and hit it right on the numbers at will. It was only when the Royals and nobility came up with the idea that they could make more money for themselves by debasing the purity of the metal that alloys came into use. When it started the alloy percentages were very low, Venetian ducats kind of led the way with a 1.4% debasement in the 13th century. For a couple hundred years other coins were still minted of pure gold. But then economics reared its head and debasement began in earnest.
