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Riddle for the weekend...
Insider2
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How can a 2011 25th Anniversary Silver Eagle "EARLY RELEASE" have "bluish" toning completely covering one side? I've seen a few in a major TPGS slab. Please take a guess.
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Set was kept in the original shipping box from the mint for a few years before it was sent in. As long as it stays in the mint shipping box it can qualify for early release or first strike designation. The ASE you are referring to came out of the airtite that it was in and was loose inside the set. I have seen that in more than one instance. In that time it toned on the one side that was face up in the packaging while it was sitting in storage.
Dang, I was expecting a limerick or a fun riddle....not something coin related!
bob
Well that was too easy!
Correct answer above.
Good brain teaser, were it not for the spoiler who knew the answer.
However, think how lucky we are to have so many "spoilers"
around here (Collectors Universe) to help us out with correct answers posted quickly. I posted the same riddle on another form and it has not been answered yet.
I googled a riddle for you all to solve, takes some math skills and problem solving. don't cheat... or do I don't care its for fun.
Riddle
You're a thief, and you've managed to break into the vault of an ancient bank filled with 100 sacks of coins. One of the sacks contains gold coins, while the other 99 are filled with counterfeit gold coins. You cannot tell the difference between the gold coins and the fakes by handling the coins, looking at them, biting them, or testing them.
The fake coins weigh exactly 1 ounce each, while the real gold coins weigh 1.01 ounces. There is a large scale with enough room for all the sacks in the vault, but as soon as you weigh something it will trigger an alarm, so you can use the scale just once before you must flee the vault.
How can you figure out which sack of coins contains the real gold by only weighing something on the scale once?
Note: The scale tells you the exact weight of whatever you put on it, it is not a balance scale.
all around collector of many fine things
It was kept in a closed mint box, shipped to the grading company recently but still qualified for ER designation.
Best place to buy !
Bronze Associate member
How does the thief know that there are 99 counterfeits bags?
If I want to be a bit of an ass, I'd say that I don't need to weigh anything. The only way a thief could know what was in the bags is if it were written right on them.
There's a sign on the wall that says "99 of these bags of coins are counterfeit one is real, good luck fool" right next to a picture of Mr T.
... It was I assume cheaper than hiring a full time officer to guard 99 bags of counterfeit coins.
all around collector of many fine things
Why would a thief want to trigger the alarm? Just take the time to bring everything home first then test it out.
Put the bags on the scale one at a time, as soon as the genuine coins hit the scale the weight should jump more than it did each time a bag of fakes was added.
Why, hang around doing all the work, I like the idea of taking all of the coins home. If That is not allowed, just grab any bag and run. After all, each bag contains GOLD.
Put the sacks in order. Empty the first sack. Fill it with one coin from sack #2, 2 coins from sack #3, etc. up to 99 coins from sack #100. Weigh the sack and the weight will tell you which sack contains the real gold based on how many 1/100 oz "over" you are.
You have pretty well solved it.
Here is the original answer;
Label the sacks 1 to 100, and take a number of coins out of each sack equal to the number on the label. So take 1 coin out of the first sack, 2 coins out of the second sack, and so on up to 100. Weigh all these coins together on the scale.
If all the coins weighed exactly 1 ounce, then you would get 5050 ounces. But the gold coins weigh 1.01 ounces. So, if you weigh your pile of coins and get 5050.01 ounces, then the gold coins are in the sack labeled 1. If you get 5050.42 ounces, the gold coins are in the sack labeled 42. If you happen to get 5051 ounces, the gold coins are in the sack labeled 100.
all around collector of many fine things
After I posted I realized that weighing the assembled sack wouldn't work without knowing the weight of the sack itself. I would add, "dump the sack on the scale" to my ans.
"If you happen to get 5051 ounces, the gold coins are in the sack labeled 100"
Actually the sack labeled 100 might be empty.
Say If the sacks only contained 100 coins each, you would have now mixed them into the pile of 5050. So to get all of the gold coins you would grab the pile of 5050 plus any coins remaining in the bag number that the weight identified. Then sort them out later.
Yes, and we have to assume that the sacks hold at least the number of coins needed to represent each sack. There also is the problem of dealing with 5000 coins, the thief would have to be a strong SOB.