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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 3179189, member: 112&quot;]Now I want to post a picture of a coin that has been damaged. But this doesn&#039;t have anything to do with my previous post. This is more along the lines of the thread&#039;s title.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is not and never was my coin, but I have owed others similar to it. This particular one belonged to a a very early forum member. And I think everybody would agree that this coin is/was damaged.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]818921[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Now here&#039;s the interesting part. It is not at all uncommon to find gold coins like this, particularly those from this coin&#039;s time period. And for many of those who collect gold coins from this time period, you probably own one, or have owned one. But you may very well not know that it ever looked like that. </p><p><br /></p><p>This is why I say that, and coupled with the previous picture it is the educational part of my post. This is what the coin looked like later.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]818923[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Many times, if not most times, coins like this are referred to as having &quot;wavy planchets&quot; by catalogs and or dealers, sometimes even collectors. But that is a very misleading term. Yes, planchets for gold coins from this time period could have been and often were wavy. But gold is not a metal that has spring characteristics. If it&#039;s bent or wavy it stays bent or wavy until other action is taken upon it to flatten or straighten it out. Being struck between 2 dies is one of those things that does flatten and straighten it out. Point being, no matter how wavy the planchet was, once it was struck it wasn&#039;t wavy anymore - it was flat ! If you put enough pressure on thin gold to impart the design from the dies then the resulting coin is going to be flat - it will not spring back to its previous wavy form the planchet may have had.</p><p><br /></p><p>So whenever you see a gold coin and it is described as a wavy planchet, most of the time that coin has been bent, folded, creased - you can choose your own term - and then straightened back out again. Even if you&#039;re not aware of it that&#039;s what has happened. So you are buying a coin that has been, or you could even say still is, damaged. </p><p><br /></p><p>There is one exception. And that is when the coin, long after it was struck, is bent perhaps slightly, or even very slightly, and perhaps more than once, and it is left that way. Coins like that are also described as wavy planchets. But you need to be aware that the planchet didn&#039;t have anything to do with it being wavy. It got that way because it was bent.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nothing wrong with that, as I said I&#039;ve owned a great many of them. But you should at least be aware of it. And those folds or bends or creases, they never get completely straightened back out. Or at least I&#039;ve never seen one that has been, you can always see traces, even if slight, of them.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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