Hard Working Coins

Rosie worked even harder!
.

This one worked hard overseas:

This one likely worked hard out West:

@Moose1913 said:

Wow!

That's amazing @Moose1913!

I think this is the first St. Gaudens I've ever seen with so much circulation!

@PerryHall said:

@Zoins said:

@Moose1913 said:

Wow!

That's amazing @Moose1913!

I think this is the first St. Gaudens I've ever seen with so much circulation!

Most were pocket pieces and didn't circulate in the normal sense of the word. Very cool coin.

Good point!

It got my blood circulating!

Few more barber dimes in the raw that have worked hard and moved around a lot.

Oddly enough if you define a coin's "work" as allowing the transfer of a set amount of wealth from one individual to another then almost every surviving 1966 quarter has "worked" harder than any of these coins.

Copper and silver coins wear much more easily than clad does and back in the day coins got most of their wear in the pockets of workmen. Before machines to dig ditches coins jingled in the pockets of men. This combined with high velocity and sliding on counters wore the coins out quickly.

But 1966 quarters have most of their wear passing from hand to hand and being counted every time they get back to the bank. They trade hands less often but they wear so slowly they have already lasted 56 years in circulation. Indeed, where old coins wore out and had to be recoined after 20 or 30 years of hard use, most modern quarters are so durable that they'll probably be lost or destroyed before they get worn to VG. They'll almost invariably become cull before getting to G.

Finding non-cull nickels from the '60's, '70's, and '80's is getting pretty tough as well. More than 60% of these coins are gone and the rest look like they've been dragged through the mill.

World moderns are often demonetized before they get to VF condition.

Wayne

1795 50C PCGS PO01