Nice foreign dollar coin in the Coinstar

Discussion in 'Coin Chat' started by Sunbird, Mar 31, 2022.

  1. Sunbird

    Sunbird Member

    Hi all – I always check the Coinstar machine when I go to the supermarket, since the cost/benefit function is similar to wearing seatbelts in having near zero cost. I scored this yesterday:

    It's a New Zealand dollar. I never saw one before, certainly don't have any. They still make them out of cupronickel, while they switched to nickel-plated steel for lower denominations.

    I've gotten quite a stash from a single Coinstar machine at our primary supermarket over the last two years. Lots of foreign coins like Singapore and South Korea, silver US dimes, and unrecognizable coin-like objects. Also a fake US dime, which was weird. It looked so strange, too shiny, a bit thick. Why would anyone bother counterfeiting dimes? The US Secret Service and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) concluded that it wasn't worth adding security features to the one-dollar bill because no one bothered counterfeiting it, so that anyone would counterfeit dimes is surprising. Maybe it's a relativity/anchoring thing? If you're thinking about making banknotes, you think larger denominations of notes. If you're thinking about making coins, you're already thinking in terms of cents (in the US context, where dollar and half dollar coins are rarely used), so maybe dimes barely make the cut along with quarters. And maybe it's not the same people – banknote forgers and coin forgers are different domains, skills, equipment. Still... dimes?
     
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  3. Mountain Man

    Mountain Man Supporter! Supporter

    Always fun to find something in a CoinStar.
     
  4. Abramthegreat

    Abramthegreat Well-Known Member

    I agree
     
  5. eddiespin

    eddiespin Fast Eddie

    They make 10X more money forging dimes than cents provided the operating costs are comparable. Speaking from the point of view of operating costs, they'd probably be better off forging quarters than dimes. Just doing the math, modern dimes weigh 2.268g, while quarters weigh 5.670g (https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coin-and-medal-programs/coin-specifications). The weight of modern quarters is 2.5X that of dimes. That's a 5:2 ratio, meaning you'd have to forge 5 dimes for every 2 quarters. Provided that's higher operating costs for the dimes than the quarters I'd think it would tilt the scale toward forging quarters over dimes, unless other variables would subsume the analysis, in which case those variables would have to be figured in.
     
  6. -jeffB

    -jeffB Greshams LEO Supporter

    You can use quarters a lot more places, and with dozens of new designs over the past few decades, how many non-collectors would even look twice at a quarter that "wasn't quite right"? Heck, the new ones have Washington facing in the opposite direction. I'll bet you could put Bart Simpson on a quarter-sized coin and pass it.
     
    Heavymetal and eddiespin like this.
  7. eddiespin

    eddiespin Fast Eddie

    Lol! I agree and how!
     
  8. Sunbird

    Sunbird Member

    No money in forging pennies, at least not from the correct metals. The melt value of a modern zinc penny is one cent now, while dimes take 2.8 cents worth of metal.

    For things like parking meters and common vending machines, a smart forger would likely go with zinc, and maybe roll bond aluminum foil over it to keep it from reacting too much with oxygen. Since coins are missing over 20% of the volume of a perfect cylinder or blank of the same diameter and max thickness, you could hit the right weight with zinc even though it's lighter than copper and nickel – just make full cylinders without all the scooped out, recessed fields of coins. I heard that people scammed parking meters with steel slugs, but it's hard to believe meters are that primitive. Zinc slugs of the correct weight would probably work everywhere since zinc isn't magnetic (I heard laundromats pick up on the magnetism of steel slugs, so I'm not sure why meters don't).

    Lead cores clad with aluminum or zinc would work too – just compute the right proportions to hit the correct weight. All this seems ridiculous though, such an incredible waste of time to forge 25 cent coins in the 21st century, but if you're going to do something, do it right I guess.
     
  9. Sunbird

    Sunbird Member

    Yeah, I think you can probably use Canadian quarters a lot of the time as well. That's always been true, since the dimensions are a near match. And they're made of steel, so much cheaper to mint oneself. I guess an interesting move would be US quarters made of steel. But if people wanted to be able to use them in machines, they'd need to go nonferrous and hit the right weight.

    It's a shame the US Mint has been so bad at consistency with the circulation coinage. There are so many quarters, and no one is going to know what they all look like. And so many dollar coins, forget about it. It's far too confusing, kind of like how US banknotes have a bunch of different security features for different denominations, and virtually no one knows which features go with which note. It's a mess.
     
  10. eddiespin

    eddiespin Fast Eddie

    You think? You’d need deep pockets just to carry them around, so I guess that’s a consideration, too. All in all, you might be right.
     
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