Cheap vs. Fancy Caliper Shoot-out

Before I got a caliper I was using a ruler. There was nothing wrong with the ruler, it was more of a new toy to play with.

 

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These cheapies do the job!

 

Years ago I picked up a machinist's dial caliper that is good up to one thousanth of an inch, which is ridiculous for ancients. My go-to measuring device is a 6" steel ruler with a metric side that I will eyeball to the closest half mm. Since very few of my ancients are perfectly round, most of my recorded measurements are along the lines of the shortest and widest diameters, such as 17mm X 18mm for a denarius.

As for price, I think you can pick up a pocket size metric steel ruler for about $2 US at any hardware store

 

The way that I have always read a Vernier scale is to look where the leftmost zero on the bottom (or Vernier scale) is pointing. This one is pointed between 26 and 27. Now to get the tenth place, see which number of the Vernier (bottom) scale lines up with any number on the scale above it...this seems to be that the Vernier 6 is aligned with a 5 on the scale above it. Thus I would read it as 26.6 mm.

 

That is the correct way.

 

That cheapo caliper seems to be just as accurate as the digital one, except some of you can't read it. For best results, might be best to use a proper coin caliper which gives the measurements out in neat mm format vs inches on the OP caliper. I have this model. Only $5 dollars. No hard guess to figure out the mm measurement with this one. It might give you a 0.1 or 0.2 mm discrepancy vs the digital caliper if you don't read it right, but it's accurate enough for most of us and won't scratch no coin.

 

Now you tell me after I spent my 99c...

 

A coin's weight seems to be so much more important than its diameter when we're discussing ancients, eh? (oh, but I love knowing both measurements)

Yah, I don't sweat the diameter too much (give or take a 1/16th of an inch ... ummm, or a millimeter)

 

When I restarted collecting, the first thing was to buy a caliper. It was at my local shop, the owner rushed to sell me his very last caliper, that had been gathering dust for years, and the box was discolored by the light. It cost $27.



But its sharp edges and spiky points scare me, in practice I'm almost always using my old brass Pica Pole, that I acquired in the seventies when setting type by hand. It measures centimeters as well as picas (a typographic unit of measure).
And just as some of you say, in ancient coins measuring exact diameters is not so important. I'm using the measure through the 12h-6h line of the coin, from the crown of the head down. If it is very oval I note in my book for instance, 15 x 18 mm.



Weighing my coins is much more important. I'm always using the same electronic scales and noting the weight to 1/100 gr. When your coins fall on the ground, or you forget which is which, weighing is a sure means to re-identify them.

 

I have a digital caliper (purchased for another purpose) but most often I use a clear plastic metric ruler. Close enough

 

I know, think about how many ancient coins you could have bought with those 99 cents. LOL.