1942 made of iron? Is steel considered iron? Also, wouldn't it cost more to buy and then ship the metal than to produce it on our own? And is the dollar exchange rate really lower? Use of the word "may" I think is used to be misleading. I call conspiracy. Thanks for the post. Thought provoking.
Steel basically consists of iron, so it it not wrong to use the term iron, especially if one wants to emphasize that in one specific case iron replaced copper. It also seems to be common in numismatic literature to simply use "Fe" (iron) for steel coins. As for that exchange rate, well, the article may originally have been written a few months ago: The USD-EUR rate for example was at a record high of about 1.60 three months ago, now it's €1.30 or so per $. Guess that these days you need a high quality crystal ball to predict or even explain such developments. But all in all this is an interesting article, about where the metals for coins came and come from, and how metal isotopes can be used to find out about this. Thanks HazardJoe for posting this! Christian
The Soho mint was in Birmingham and not Cornwall LOL the copper mines might well have been there and in Devon and North wales but the mint most certainly was not Nice piece on the mint http://24carat.co.uk/birminghammintframe.html
slang & coins as Americans we have do thing our way since 1776! as a cent collector we have come to change the name of many coin . just not the penny per say but most coin we have called many more name Bust Morgan Barber and,so I say that we can do that. in America we all know what coin series were talking about
Steel/Iron Iron is a single product produced from iron ore. Steel is an alloy. In a range of adding .5% to 2.0% you find a simple additive of carbon to make strong carbon based steel. The alloys are extensive, Chrome based for Stainless steel, and multiple elements to make exotic steels. Vehicle frames on trucks and unibody cars now boast highly crush resistant light weight steel. This will continue until the passenger unit in a car becomes to stiff. Probably a 25% compression of a fixed beam at a predetermined load. Look under a late model truck at the frame. You will notice how abrupt the bends are. This tells you the product is much thinner then the early 90s. Steel , the wonder metal !
Good grief there are so many errors and just "duh" information in that article. How much study did that take since it has been common knowledge among cent collectors for over sixty years at least. True, and common knowledge for over two years. (I do realize that with recent dropping metal prices it is no longer true but I don't hold that against them since this was probably written at least a little while back. Maybe a month ago.) True, and the first studies that demonstrated it were published about 15 to 20 years ago. Copper was supplied by Matthew Boulton beginning in 1797. Matthew Boulton was the entrepreneur, Matthew Robinson Boulton was his son and didn't take over completely until around 1809 after Matthew Boulton died. Boulton was not the Director of the Soho Mint, he was the owner of it. And as mentioned it was not in Cornwall, it was in Birmingham. Matthew Boulton did own copper mines in Cornwall though. Whether the copper for our coins came from Cornwall or the larger deposits in Wales and Anglesey I do not know. Not surprising since before 1836 we really didn't have any significant domestic gold supplies and not that much domestic silver before the 1860's and 70's. Huh? They were pure copper until 1857 and then smaller and 88% copper until 1864. And they say they collaborated with a coin dealer? Something tells me they didn't collaborate much. WHAT!! In the early 1900's 95% Cu 5% NICKEL!! They have no idea what they are talking about. Changed to 95% copper 5% zinc in 1981?? Try 1963. If they can't get the KNOWN compositions right for the coins, I'm not sure how far I would trust their conclusions on unknown material. Of course to be fair, the scientists may have all of their data and information correct. It is VERY possible that all of these errors were made by the person that wrote the article. (Journalist and reporters can NEVER seem to get a numismaticaly related story right unless they regularly cover them for a numismatic publication.)
