A coins weight

I have ordered a copy of Coin World Almanac, thanks for the information GDJMSP. Enjoy a happy and safe holiday season.

 

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Resolution is the number of decimal places being reported. If a weight scale reports a value of 1.25 g. and another reports 1.2500, the difference is in terms of resolution. More decimal places do not assure better accuracy nor better precision.

 

It's important to calibrate and tare your scale before weighing your coins. That will probably reduce the variation.

 

I helped write the Coin World Almanac back in the 70's. I even updated that chart for it from something that Ed Fleischmann had previously prepared.

The 1943 steel cents had two semi-official weights. They started out making them at 41.5 grains (2.69 grams) and then switched to 42.5 grains (2.754 grams.) Either had a tolerance of 2 grains (0.13 gams.) So, anything from 2.56 to 2.88 grams was OK.

 

Thanks for your work.

 

Do you know if older, cheaper editions have the specific gravity listed as well?

 

I received my copy of Coin World Almanac, man what a wealth of information. Thank you GDJMSP.

 

Of the Coin World Almanac? Yes, they do.

 

I've noticed that genuine coins with pretty heavy wear can be considerably less than the specified weight. For instance, I just received a 1921-P Walking Half Dollar for Christmas in about VG-8 condition. The spec weight is 12.5-grams. My scale indicates 12.03-grams for the 1921-P in VG-8. I compared it against a similar graded 1920-S, which was also 12.03-grams. Thus, these two VG-8 coins had 0.47-grams worn off or 3.76% of their total weight. I weighed two AU coins (1936 and 1947-D) with weights of 12.39 and 12.43 grams. These coins are within 1% of the specified 12.5-grams. Finally, I weighed a null date Walker with a weight of 11.28-grams (nearly 10% of its weight rubbed off). If noticed similar trends on older, worn, coins from my collection of various coin denominations (silver and copper mostly).

 

Either that or not be tooooooooooooooooooooooo anal

 

When I was working at a coin shop I used to pull "slick" silver coins from the incoming junk silver and scrap them rather then just throw them back into the junk silver we were selling retail. Did not want to cheat our customers.

Just out of curiosity as to how much silver they had lost, a few times when I was making up refinery lots I weighed batches of slicks (which eliminates the possibility that they were all at the low end of the tolerance weights when new) and found that the lots were fairly consistently 7% light. This applied to both dollars and fractional silver.

 

I was waiting for that...

 

I LOVE THAT COIN!!!