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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 25490756, member: 66&quot;]On copper coins no they didn&#039;t because the metal value, while somewhat close to the face value, had enough wiggle room in it that it provided the profit upon which the mint operated.&nbsp; You half cent might have between a quarter and 3/8ths wourth of a cents worth of copper in it and your weight would have to be significantly off to lose money on them.&nbsp; Plus rolling a sheet of metal to a specified thickness wasn&#039;t too difficult and since they knew the diameter of the blanks they would be punching out it was fairly simple matter to control the sheet thickness to get blanks within the correct weight range.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now silver and gold were another matter.&nbsp; The value of the metal was very close to the face value and the higher value of the metal meant that tolerances had to be much closer.&nbsp; Enough so that you couldn&#039;t just depend on the thickness of the sheet of metal.&nbsp; So in the early mint and until the first could decades of the 20th century every blank WAS individually weighed.&nbsp; In the early mint they had an entire team called adjusters that would take each blank and weigh it.&nbsp; If it was too light it was condemned back to the melting pot.&nbsp; If it was within tolerance they passed it on to the next department.&nbsp; But if it was overweight they would gently use a file to reduced its weight until it was within tolerance and then pass it on to the next step in the coining process.&nbsp; In the early years they would file the face of the blanks but that often left marks that were still visible after the coins were struck (known as adjustment marks).&nbsp; Later they stopped filing the faces and used the files on the edge of the blanks where subsequent upsetting and striking would wipe out the marks.&nbsp; In the latter part of the 19th century automatic weighting machines were used that could weigh the blanks and sort them much faster than the adjusters could.&nbsp; This was an automatic weighing machine from the US Mint.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://scontent.fosu3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.18169-9/10997335_10153131544599459_1192367473915762898_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&amp;ccb=1-7&amp;_nc_sid=0327a3&amp;_nc_ohc=1nA4ZJJfjbAQ7kNvgEFS33p&amp;_nc_ht=scontent.fosu3-1.fna&amp;oh=00_AYBJ3tsuqjDxOomlFVRfKZaImidM_qWGZi6E_VTcowo5cg&amp;oe=66C78DDC" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>The picture above the machine shows a group of such machines in use. After the machine sorted them they only had to worry about adjusting the heavy ones.&nbsp; Eventually they stopped adjusting at all and simply condemned the heavies back to the melting pot as well.&nbsp; As the price of silver kept falling in the early 20th century they finally stopped weighing the silver coins as not being worthwhile</p><p><br /></p><p>Gold coins were handled about the same way as the silver in the 19th century but by the 20th the procedure changed somewhat,&nbsp; The coins were still weighed and sorted, but the lights and heavies were not sent back to the melting pot.&nbsp; Instead they would put the proper face value in each bag, but they would selectively combine lights, heavies, and normal coins so that the total weight of the coins in the BAG were within tolerance.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The original chart in the almanac was compiled by Tom DeLory.&nbsp; Much of the information can be found in the legislation as mentioned earlier, for those not mentioned, Tom got the information from the US Mint.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Three pieces from each deposit of gold or silver, not just three pieces from each year.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>They were more accustomed to the use of fractions or X parts in so many up until the government adopted the metric system in 1866.&nbsp; After that amounts are specified in grams and decimal fractions of a gram.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>It is surprising how precise they were able to make balances back them.&nbsp; They had balances that could weigh several hundred pounds of metal to within a quarter grain.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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