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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 489702, member: 57463&quot;]They are punched.&nbsp; I have seen enough to know that.&nbsp; Over on rec.collecting.coins a few years back there were ignorant speculations about how &quot;banker&#039;s marks&quot; and test cuts were made.&nbsp; You could just try it and see, but some people preferred to offer a priori opinions.&nbsp; Anyway, my father-in-law and I tried punches and chisels and hammers with the coins on wood or braced by metal.&nbsp; (Some rcc people said &quot;hard surface&quot; while other reasoned &quot;pliant surfact.&quot;)&nbsp; I never got anything that looked like a test cut or a chopmark. Take the lack of &quot;pimples.&quot;&nbsp; I have five chopmarked 8 reales coins.&nbsp; None has raised surfaces on the other side opposite the chopmark.&nbsp; But the coins I made all do -- or most, if they were hit hard enough for solid image.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Maybe it was just me -- and I think that&#039;s a valid point: people even 100 years ago were not who we are today.&nbsp; (They had schools for &quot;shroffs&quot; where they learned to test coins.)&nbsp; Maybe our machine age punches and machine age coins are different enough from 150 years ago in Asia or 1500 years ago in Rome or whatever...&nbsp; For one thing our coins are alloys and are struck with tons of pressure, while theirs were pure and were hammered hot by men with muscles.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I dunno...&nbsp; But I admit that.&nbsp; I tried it and I have no clue.&nbsp; Still, it&#039;s interesting, eh?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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