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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;sylvester, post: 6757, member: 708&quot;]Well $20 doesn&#039;t sound too bad to me, sounds pretty decent actually.</p><p><br /></p><p>Actrually on second thoughts your coin might just be chipped not clipped.</p><p><br /></p><p>Chipped is where you have bits missing from the edge, usually due to it being dropped or accidental damage.</p><p><br /></p><p>Clipped on the other hand is not accidental. One reason for bringing in milled coins was to end the practice of clipping.</p><p><br /></p><p>Back in the days when coins were worth their weight in gold or silver, merchants used to weigh the coins to make sure they were of the correct weight for that denomination.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some unscrupulous people though realised you could make a profit by clipping or shearing tiny slithers of silver from the edge of the coin, and then passing the under weight coin on. If you did this with every coin you acquired in change, you&#039;d soon gather up quite a bit of silver, and then you&#039;d sell it to a silversmith.</p><p><br /></p><p>It was very illegal to do this, and you risked severe punishment if caught, but people did it. Milled coins made it impossible to do this because there was (usually, not always the case though) milling/reeding on the edge of the coin, and of course the toothed border.</p><p><br /></p><p>What happened then is instead of clipping coins they started filing coins, (this is where guinea filers come in), they&#039;d get a gold guinea (a milled coin) and they&#039;d file a moderate amount of gold off of it all way around, and then they&#039;d put the milling back on (as it was basic sideways sloping reeds, it didn&#039;t prove too difficult).</p><p><br /></p><p>Just goes to show you can&#039;t stop profit hungry people.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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