I have a 1945 mercury dime that is either damaged or is a waffled coin. Is there any way to tell by looking at the attached picture. Your expertise would be appreciated.http://www.cointalk.org/images/attach/bmp.gif
Looks like damage to me. And, when did the mint start "waffling" coins? The only examples I have seen personally are modern.
Roy, the question I have is what was the prior method? They have always sent coins off to be destroyed... before waffling did they just send them with cancelling them? Not sure myself.
Silver coins weren't waffled and they weren't destroyed. They were melted down for the silver! The coin you are showing is damaged.
I thought it was damaged originally. Thanks for the information, especially the picture of a waffled coin. Being new to collecting I hadn't run across anything like this before.
Before they got the waffling machine they had trucks that took the coins (along with guards with guns) to a recycling plant that (with the on looking eyes of guards) melted down the coins...it became too costly and so they went with the way they do it now---there was an article about this in a ANA mag a few months ago. Speedy
Even modern coins such as the Lincoln cent are melted down after they have had their run in circulation (in the case of Lincoln Cents the average time in circulation is about 20-25 years!!!). Coins are waffled as a means of cancellation before they are melted down. The only difference between the modern coins and the earlier silver issues is the intrinsic value of the metal. So the question remains, were the coins simply not cancelled before melting in the past or was a different method used?
They were not canceled at all. The mint began waffling the coins about 2 yrs ago because too many error coins from the reject bins were escaping from the mint and being sold on the open market.
That's kind of what I though GDJMSP, but I was not sure. Why was the U.S. so late to the party on waffling? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but haven't other countries been doing this for quite some time?
You may well be correct about other countries - to be honest I don't know. As for the US being late to the party - typical I'd say
I think one other country (at least that is what the ANA mag said) got a machine before the US...I think that the other country is over in the east somewhere....don't know where. Speedy
Actually, I saw a coin from somewhere in Europe that had been „waffled“ (not comparable to modern waffling, but similar concept), and it was done several decades ago. Also, I have some examples of destroyed/waffled euro coin blanks. The thing about waffling that makes me curious is that while the coin is no longer usable in face-to-faced commerce, each waffled coin still retains the same weight and electromagnetic signature as an unwaffled coin. Seems to me that with a bit of pounding you could get it back into round, flat shape and spend it in a vending machine.
I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that the 26-ton press thins out the coin a bit, thereby increasing its diameter, which would make it unusable in vending machines.
I am sure you are right about that, but with enough whacking and hammering, I think you could get the rough shape back. I think these days the weight and magentic signature are the most important things. Of course, if the size is dramatically off then it won't enter the machine. I don't necessarily plan on testing my theory, but I was just curious from a techical standpoint.
The countries of the EU used the machines beginning in 2002 to cancel the redeemed obsolete coinage. As for pounding a waffled coin flat and using it in a machine, while the waffling might not alter the diameter that much, the pounding it would take to get it flat again definately would. Then pounding the edge to rduce the diameter would probably result in a rim that was too high. And considering that the largest US coin commonly used in a vending machine is a quarter, you are going to a lot of effort to save a quarter.
