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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 24882837, member: 68&quot;]I don&#039;t believe this is strictly true.&nbsp; Certainly cu/ ni clad copper was chosen specifically because it is a very hard metal that wears forever in circulation.&nbsp; The 45% of old clad quarters that survive in circulation are cull because of modern handling techniques but they still have lost only about 10% of thickness and 2% of their weight.&nbsp; They are tough as nails.&nbsp; Some like the 1972 issues appear to be even harder than others.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>But these coins were made from softened planchets in an operation known as annealing before being struck.&nbsp; I&#039;m sure even after annealing they are harder than gold or even silver but modern die steels are many times tougher than they were back in the days when relief was lowered again and again to free up production capacity to make worthless pennies.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s ironic the pennies can&#039;t survive anyway because the metal virtually evaporates in air but because of them all of our coins have to look bad.&nbsp; They look so bad the mint won&#039;t even investigate what exactly has torn up most of the coins in circulation. </p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s perhaps even more ironic that nobody will collect clads because they are considered debased garbage but in point of fact clad is the highest tech metal ever used in coins at least through 1965 and almost none survive in any collectible grade because something has scratched them to bits in the last quarter century.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>And by the by the older clad quarters had nearly as high of relief as the silver did.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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