PCGS Knows All.... Apparently

1961 or 1691?

 

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High Relief??? It has an orange peel surface, but the relief isn't any higher than a 1945. The only issue with a different relief the first year is the 1921 Peace Dollar.

 

So the 2500 years of Chinese CAST money aren’t coins? I think your definition needs a little tweaking.

It escaped the mint in a mint bag. It was monetized by the treasury. It is legal tender. It is a coin.

 

Your question has been answered. You can quit running around the site interrupting multiple threads with that coin. Thanks.

 

=12.34567

 

=42

 

No, you forgot to monetize the exponent. It's a common mistake.

 

Thanks y'all for the entertainment.

 

Yes, in our enthusiasm for all that is numismatic, let's not forget basic definitions, such as the word, "coin"(!), an object which is, AT ITS ESSENCE: "a piece of metal stamped and issued by the authority of a government for use as money."

If it cannot function as a coin, or could have never functioned as a coin, well...

 

I'm completely with Doug on this one. Waffles, feeder fingers, nails, blank planchets, SANDPAPER, how can these things have a 'coin grade,' when they are not coins? I think if they have to be slabbed, they should be labeled as 'genuine' and that's it. No grade. I have been collecting coins for almost 3 years, so I certainly don't have the experience or expertise that I value so much in a lot of you. Just my honest opinion.

 

And if you take classic gold or any gold to the over whelming majority of stores you won’t be able to spend it either. Same with ASEs, 3 cent pieces, 20 cent pieces, bust coins, seated coins, large cents, half cents ect.

If the definition of a coin is being able to spend it then very few things are actually coins

 

Yeah, but at one time you could spend those. Leftover webbing or circles of sandpaper were never spendable.

 

Uh, but have those metal discs EVER been used as money, at any time during their existence? Do they, at least, have "legal tender status?" If the answer is yes, then they are COINS.

End of discussion.

 

As others have pointed out, "take [a coin/not-coin] to a store [today] and try and spend it" isn't a good test.

If we extend that from "recognized as money today" to "was ever recognized as money", it takes care of trimes and gold. It just leaves us with defining the boundary between "coin" and "not coin". Is a 2% off-center coin still a "coin"? I'd bet most people wouldn't look twice at it. 5%? 20%? 50%? Somewhere along the line there, it starts being "weird", then moves on to "I don't think there's a place for this in my cash register". But a numismatist can still easily recognize it as an error coin, and tell its denomination. That's true even for the oddity in this thread.

I can't fault TPGs for taking a numismatic perspective on "coin" vs. "not coin".

The coin was struck (badly) at the mint, it was issued as money (presumably in a bag of not-so-defective coins), it's still made of metal, and its value is still identifiable -- to anyone who's more than slightly familiar with classic 20th-century US coins. If you want to start hauling the goalposts around by saying who needs to be able to recognize it, this becomes a very different game. (Blind people? People who've never seen US coins and don't speak English? True Scotsmen?)

 

Every collector with a commemorative, Civil War token, British token, etc., that was graded by PCGS or NGC may disagree with you on this. Why can you not grade a token or other struck object? Grade has little to do with a coin's monetary function unless it's in a basal state and the person receiving payment refuses it because he or she cannot determine its value.

 

The argument of not being able to take the coin in the OP to a store and spend it is weak. First of all let's just pretend this is a modern clad dime. Somebody just received it somehow, they will instantly recognize what it is supposed to be and that it is special. They won't attempt to spend it, they will save it. If the ding dong was dim enough to try to spend it, most likely a vast majority of the clerks would recognize it as something different. They would accept it as a dime and then trade a dime from their pocket and save the special piece. It's done with anything that is out of the ordinary and recognizable for what it should be.

The coin in the OP meets the technical requirements for a coin, and I would argue that it could be spendable. Will every clerk accept it? No, but there are a lot that would. Just watch a clerk when you hand them a half dollar or an Ike dollar a lot of them will end up buying it from the register because its different.

On the subject of nails, sandpaper and waffled coins, no those are not coins. But can they be graded? Why not? The current grading scale is not just for coins. TPG's currently grade, tokens, so called dollars and medals. None of which are coins, yet they are still graded. The point of grading is ranking it's condition on a scale based on how it would have came out of the press that struck it to how it is now.

 

The question is whether it's a coin which means can you use it to buy/pay for something. The only reason store clerks or anyone would take that piece of metal as payment is because of it's collectors value...that's it. Without its collector value, the clerk will think you're crazy and will ask you for a real coin.

Why don't you try this. Take one of your bills, rip it in half (50%, not even 5%). Take one half to a store and use it to pay for something. It's still recognizable as part of a bill, it was issued by the mint...let this thread know how it goes.

 

You have to rip it over 50 percent or it’s worthless so you can’t go exactly 50 and double your money.

As far as the error, it’s called an error coin for a reason. The spending not spending argument is rather silly given that the overwhelming majority of coins we collect would fail if you tried to spend them today

Even if everyone just agrees it’s not a coin what does that change, nothing