What is the Best Kind of Magnet to Test Coins?

Good to know, Jeff. Thanks for the info.

 

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I use a cheap, <$5, magnet from a stud finder I bought at Harbor freight. If it sticks to the wall with the nails in a stud, it'll work well on your coins.

 

Do you know if the counterfeit Morgan and Peace dollars are magnetic?

I may have a chance to buy a couple listed on a local classifieds website and I don't have a real Morgan to take along with me and I'm not that familiar with them to look at one and be 100% sure it's the real thing, thats why I thought of the magnet. I could pick out a bad fake but not a good one.

 

Some counterfeits are attracted to a magnet but, as someone noted above, many counterfeits are not attracted to a magnet.

 

Most fakes now from China are made of copper and Lead which are not magnetic and the alloy has a density close to Silver. Apparently you can still use a magnet to spot them because of Silvers' electromagnetic properties by using a magnetic slide, have not tried that so i can't comment on it.

 

The Mythbusters tested this and found that an ordinary magnet will not actually do that. You need some really strong magnetic fields to erase a credit card.
I found that amusing, but yea I think long term magnetic exposure will shorten the life of anything with an electronic strip on it.

 

After you posted the link I tried it out, and it works very well for situations when you can't tell with certainty if a coin is silver or not by other means. I used a single neodymium magnet that was 10" x 3.5" x 3mm thick. The difference in sliding times between silver and non silver coins is quite apparent.
One thing that becomes clear which the video doesn't cover: if you become adept at using this magnetic slide technique, you can even clock slight differences due to variations in alloys in coins of the same silver purity! I was blown away by how scientifically accurate this technique is in practice.
Thanks again for that link.

 

any kits to buy? or stay away from acid test?

 

If you have a very strong magnet, try it on the magnetic ink on a dollar bill. Interesting.

 

Strange but true. One of the Stupid Magnet tricks we used to do in the MRI lab was to drop a dollar bill near the magnet's bore, and watch it flutter in.

The more interesting one, though, was to take the bore cap -- a quarter-inch-thick aluminum plate with a handle -- and wave it near the magnet. It would writhe in your grip like it was alive, but if you held it still, the magnet exerted no force at all on it. It was only the eddy currents, induced by motion through the field, that produced force.

I wish I'd been able to try it with an ASE. Maybe I'll take one along next time I visit.