I’m curious if anyone happens to know if American gold & silver coins were ever clipped or sweated? Like has anyone seen any proof of say a Double Eagle or Morgan dollar that has been clipped? A Double Eagle is ~1 troy oz of gold so it seems like it would be possible to shave like a gram off each coin and melt that into bullion and profit off of it. If so was there any sort of risk or punishment for people who did it? Apparently it happened all the time in Ancient times and Medieval times but I’ve never seen an example of a clipped American coin.
Most US gold and silver got reeded or lettered edges to avoid this. Processes like sweating were probably more common. In a thread on another forum, Roger Burdette says that sweating actually refers to etching off precious metal with acid, and calls the jiggle-in-a-bag technique "abrasive debasement". It seems that most modern sources, though, including the Royal Mint, call it "sweating".
I used to have an 1850-O seated dime that had long ago been filed. The coin had long since toned enough that even the filed edge didn't appear too unnatural in color. I just found the images and posted below:
Doubtful . . . Mother Nature doesn't make sure that random impacts leave the width of rim looking so uniform all of the way around.
