When coins wear do they loose the metal or is it just pushed into the coin? I'm thinking wearing off.
depends on what happens to the coin, it can be pushed into the coin and wear off or if hit hard enough chip the coin.
When coins are worn they weigh less. So there is metal loss. This was true for silver coins. The current coins maybe hold up better. Except for the zinc cents which are a disgrace.
And most others think that as well. But - that aint exactly the way it is. Books is telling you - "wear can cause the loss of metal". Well, the key word in that sentence is CAN, and I suspect Books worded it that way quite intentionally. And he is also quite correct - it "can" cause a loss of metal. But that is not the same thing as saying - it does cause a loss of metal. Here's the explanation. With almost any coin, regardless of composition or type, the first and middle stages of wear DO NOT cause a loss of metal. It is only when coins are worn to the point of VG grade, and often not until they have reached G grade, or lower that they lose enough metal due to wear to take the coins out of mint tolerance. What you have to understand is this. When a coin is made it has a given weight that has been established by design. And there is a tolerance for that weight, a range if you will. That tolerance range differs with each coin type, but each one has its own. As a rough rule of thumb that tolerance is about 1%. So when brand new and freshly minted every coin of a given type will weigh within 1%, plus or minus, of its design specified weight. What that means is you can take a coin that is fairly graded at F, weigh that coin, and it will be within 1% of its original design weight. In other words it will not have lost any weight, at least not that can be proven because of the tolerance range. That is why wear "can" cause a loss of metal. But it will not until the wear has reached its extreme stages.
OK, I can buy this, but, the tolerance you speak of is just that, a tolerance, meaning each and every coin doesn't have to weigh the same. I honestly think that any degree of wear represents a loss of material. I remember you have shown the pic of the gold eagle you carried around for quite awhile, did you perhaps weigh it when it was new and when you finally disposed of it (BTW, what DID you do with it?).
Quite true, and they don't all weigh the same. But most are so close as to not matter. And you also need to keep in mind that in the past tolerance levels were much tighter than they are in modern times. Especially with gold and silver coins. And it's that line of thinking that usually gets most people. What they don't take into account is that wear doesn't remove metal from the coin until it reaches very advanced stages. Prior to that it's more a matter of the metal being pushed down, squished, flattened out - but remaining on the coin. Yeah it's this coin, and it was one of several that I had carried over the years. And yes, I weighed it when purchased and when I took these pics. As you see it above, I would grade that coin at no better than F12. And yet it had only lost 0.003 gm in weight. And no, that is not unusual. What did I do with it ? That one I sold to another forum member in 2009 who happened to want it because it was mine. And because it had cost it him the dinner check when I used it to flip to see who paid Its predecessors however were spent at various coin shows when I happened to run out of cash and still had coins I wanted to buy
Well... there is a difference between removing metal and "removing measurable metal" (with scales of reasonable precision). Everytime the coin touches something, atoms are exchanged, but atoms don't weigh enough to be measured. It's only when enough atoms are removed that you can measure it...
Yeah, but the bottom line is this. If a coin can show as much wear as that one does, and only lose 0.003 of a gram of weight, then it can reasonably be said that wear does not remove weight from a coin until it reaches very advanced stages.
Just as a side note, the use of a gold coin for this point is actually pretty important. Since gold does not oxidize, one cannot claim that weight was added due to oxidation. (Gold coins can tone, but that is because of the copper in the alloy. This coin is .999 fine) But the weight added from any oxidation (on a silver coin, for example) is so close to nothing that it is negligible.
I sold it years ago and don't recall the name. But modern scales that can weigh to 3 decimal places are pretty common.
Excellent, you cause me to rethink what I said and believed and then I realized that one of the properties is malleability or the property of being able to deform or spread when under pressure. Spreading the images on the coin...hmmmm
An ANACS authenticator told us that they used a Mettler or Sartorius (?) balance good out to .001. They weighed the coins and photographed them in order to ID them. On one occasion, he was weighing a group of $20 Saints and two coins in order one after the other weighed exactly the same out to three decimal places. He weighed each two times more with the same result as he could not believe it! When he went to work at another service, they bought a balance that was good to 4 decimal places. @BadThad What's the chance of posting a photo of that "monster" in your lab? Also, do you care to comment on the opinions posted in this thread? Does wear remove metal from a coin or is it just pushed in?
