What happens to worn out coins?

Anybody know what happens to coins that are too worn for circulation? What is the standard? How are these coins taken out of circulation? Do they weigh them at The Fed?

 

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They're like old soldiers....they just fade away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyDldGPTDNQ

 

They end up in somebody's coin collection like this US half dime from 1838.

 

But banks do not have very good guidelines, and are not really pressed to pull the coins from circulation like they are bank notes. The truth is that the government wants all damaged coins ideally to just collect somewhere in someone's jar and never be "redeemed". This assumption is inherent into the GAO calculation of costs of coins versus paper money. I do not think they calculated any coinage return versus about 99% paper return in their analysis proving coinage was much cheaper than paper bills.

In practice, us coin collectors are the ones who provide this service to the US taxpayers. When a coin is old enough to have so much wear it is usually old enough to attract a coin collectors attention.

 

Some supposedly destroyed 'waffle cancelled' coins get away from the Mint and end up holdered by TPGs.

 

now now krispy lets not make sinister allegations

u can do that at hoe also with a waffle canceller

 

...but the ones I make at home taste better because they come with whipped butter and Vermont maple syrup, so the TPG won't grade those.

 

They seem to have failed to put that in their reports... unless the 'profit' you're mentioning fell under some overtly generalized or otherwise obfuscated language which they did actually report publicly. :smile

 

So the mint takes back 1.1% of the coins it issues out every year as returns, huh? Not bad, I thought it would be a touch lower. This is excluding collector coins of course, which if included would lower it to .7%. I wonder if poor quality proof set returns would be counted in that number.

 

Thanks. That makes for an interesting aside to the OPs questions about what happens to worn out coins which are not recycled out of circulation.

 

I suppose I erroneously also thought there were coins returned damaged which were sent through the milling equipment to 'waffle' them. Thanks for clarifying this.

 

That's the second time I've been referred to as an "OP". What does that mean?

 

can mean Original Poster (or something like 'original point' -- of discussion)

 

Thanks, Krispy.

 

You would also probably find the waffled coins listed under the sale of coinage scrap since that is what it is. And most of the waffled coins were put on the market by private companies that bought scrap from the Mint and then sold the waffled coins.

I was unaware that the mint ever sold the waffled coins directly to collectors.