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Do coins lose weight from circulating?
cheezhed
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Or does the metal gets displaced (smoothed)?
This came up at our monthly coin club meeting.
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Do coins lose weight from circulating?
This is a public poll: others will see what you voted for.
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Weigh a few pieces that are slicks or even AG. They'll be light. I've had 90% junk silver slicks that were 10%+ underweight.
Yes. Weigh a dateless SLQ and compare it to a 64 Washington
When silver is running you can buy old worn coins like barbers at a discount and then after it settles down there has been as much as a 30% premium.
Why is this a poll? It's not a question of experience or opinion, it's a question of whether something is a fact or not. You might as well have a poll asking whether 1929 Washington Quarters exist or not.
Yes of course. Junk silver in bulk tends to be weighed as measurement of face value becomes less precise. Face value calculations are generally for uncirculated coins. In smaller quantities the difference can be a few dollars, but in large quantities, the difference in wear could mean hundreds or even thousands of dollars!!
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Lol. How did it even come up at a coin club? Has no one ever handled a slick? You don't even need a scale
I think of "smoothing" as wear, which is loss of metal. Maybe people are confusing this with being flattened mechanically, which is displacement.
all things wear including coin
Most definitely, due to the laws of physics. Wear over time generates friction, which in turn decreases the weight of the coin.
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Wasn’t it F that was stamped on worn underweight gold coins?
It was an L that the subtreasury in NYC stamped on coins that were light or underweight.
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"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
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Friction and wear physically remove metal. Consider sandpaper, a good macro-scale source of friction: imagine taking a coin, and a piece of sandpaper, and rubbing that sandpaper back and forth across the coin lots of times. You will end up with a very flattened coin, and a tiny pile of silver shavings that have been physically removed from the coin. There will be even more tiny pieces of silver still stuck to the sandpaper.
At a microscopic level, your fingers are just like that sandpaper, scouring away at a coin's surface and physically removing tiny pieces of metal every time you move your fingers across a coin's surface. Just because you don't see with your eyes those tiny pieces of metal that have been broken off your coin from circulation, does not mean that it does not happen.
For direct evidence that this is happening, try this simple experiment:
Take a slick, worn silver coin - hopefully one you don't particularly care about. How hold it in your hand, rub it in your palms. Give that coin a bit of good old fashioned circulation handling with your bare hands.
Now put the coin down and smell your hands. Chances are, your hands now "smell metallic". Some people cannot "smell silver" like this, but many people can. Technically, it's not the metal itself you're smelling, but the oils in your fingerprints that have reacted with the microscopic bits of metal that have broken off the coin, forming volatile organometallic compounds which you can then smell. But that's still, technically, direct evidence that some of the metal which was formerly part of the coin is no longer on the coin, but has drifted into your nose.
Government legislation regarding coinage even takes this into account: a coin is technically only legal tender while it falls within the legal weight range for that coin prescribed in the legislation. If wear from circulation causes a coin to lose so much weight that it has fallen below the minimum weight for that coin, it is no longer legal tender and should be withdrawn and remelted into new coin.
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Stack a $10 face roll of well worn Barber and Standing quarters next to a roll of 1964 quarters. You will quickly see how much metal is worn away over time.
No. They lose mass.
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Don
Like thread on a vehicle tires.
peacockcoins
Great analogy as there is loss on both tires and coins.
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I think it may be a matter of degree.
From discussions on another forum, it was asserted that changes to higher grades, say Fine and above, were due to the high points flattening, not wearing off. The coins weighed the same as uncirculated ones. At lowest grades, yes, the metal has actually worn away and the weight decreases.
I believe someone performed an experiment simply by weighing coins in different grades. I am not set up to do that but maybe someone who reads this could do so, and provide definitive information. My naive, unsubstantiated opinion is that the graph would show the weight tapering extremely gradually down to about a 35 grade, then dropping more quickly after that.
It's a matter of degree. There is some moving of metal and some removal of metal in ALL GRADES, even "uncirculated grades". It's not that more or less is happening in any grade. You simply don't notice any mass loss or any flattening in higher grades because there just hasn't been a lot yet. The coin isn't made of butter that gets softer as it is handled.
I once weighed a small pile of "slick" early 20th century silver and it was about 7% light.
I don't think I'm on board with this theory.
It has to do with how the changes occur.
If new coins are clanking around against each other then there might be apparent "wear" from the high points being flattened (metal displacement).
However, if the details are worn from handling, circulation, friction, etc., then metal has been removed.
I'm not even sure how people can use weight to measure slight variations in wear since the mint has a tolerance range for weights of new coins. Additionally, the metal lost by light handling wear is so minuscule that it would be difficult to pick up with the kinds of scales a hobbyist might use.
If someone took an uncirculated coin and wore it down a few grades I expect that there would be missing metal/weight, but finding a scale sensitive enough to register it might be a challenge.
But it's only one side of the tire. Coins usually wear down on both sides. 😉
Disclaimer: I'm not a dealer, trader, grader, investor or professional numismatist. I'm just a hobbyist. (To protect me but mostly you! 🤣 )
I voted "yes," but I have read that it is possible for a gold coin to lose sharpness due to circulation and not lose weight. Gold is very soft and can end of "flattened" instead or worn.
i voted yes coins will over time with wear and such weigh less then they did when minted
*https://photos.app.goo.gl/zhzgx5nmxk4H2sM59
Also I and millions of other people need to start circulating more.
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Thank you for all your responses.
Metal moves, gets displaced and flattened and it wears down losing weight. Sometimes the metal reacts with foreign substances and gains weight too as the metal reacts and forms metal salts.
Mr_Spud
First, I cannot believe on of the pros at that coin club didn't nix that question immediately as was done by everyone here. Now I'll pile on.
I believe "Smoothing" is a relatively new term introduced into the many centuries-long history of numismatics - probably by an auction house. It is similar to using environmental damage rather than corrosion that waters-down an altered coin with a tooled surface! SMOOTHING IS NOT WEAR. Surface metal is displaced rather than removed.
Call me nuts but I have been weighing coins on and off for a few years ever since reading someplace that some researcher tried to make a grading scale based on a coin's weight. What was surprising to me is coins do not lose very much weight until they reach the lower half of the Sheldon Scale. Add the allowed Mint tolerance of a BU coin right from the start and that may help explain why.
It would make an interesting article for someone working at an auction house weighing all the Bust halves for example from BU to VF and note how little the change is.
Even down to VG the loss is minimal. Once you get under VG the loss can get significant.
Thanks. It's nice to have my experience backed up by a 5 Star member.
I agree that the term "smoothing" has a different connotation, but I was simply trying to use the OP's terminology. Wear will indeed "smooth" a coin's surface.
My genuine apologies to you sir.
Actually, I was shocked that you misused that word. I should have directed my correction to the OP. Words mean something and it would be a shame to see inaccuracies as that slip into common use.
Actually it's "Tread" - "Thread" is used for sewing
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4"-10"?????? Inches of tread depth? Who published that? Probably the National Safety Ass.
Where do you see 4" - 10"??
I see 10/32" which is 5/16" and I see 4/32" which is 1/8" and everything in between in 32ds of an inch
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>
I have some Zincolns that will qualify.
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Thanks, I'm not educated or a car guy!
I believe these silver ions were absorbed into the skin of the hearty Men of the 18th and 19th century…. Up to 1965……that’s when the Hippies and WeirdOs began to take hold!!!
Now that my opinion has weathered a bit of rough skepticism and found an atom of support, I would like to elaborate.
The theory is that a new coin will wear (actually deform) somewhat rapidly. A coin with high contours will get banged around and the metal will get, well, smooshed. It is not knocked off or worn so much as just hammered flatter.
But, once the detail has been obliterated, let’s say around VF35 or so, the coin is flat enough that the buffeting of the surface can’t really flatten it much more. Then the changes are due to a much slower and longer process as the metal is simply worn away. I guess you could say it enters more of a “slick” phase where it stays for a long time. It should get thinner and lighter until it is taken out of circulation.
I dunno, it just makes sense. It is a bit hard to swim against the current, when so many folks just assume that “wear” is only achieved by removing metal. But to me it makes more sense that two processes are active to varying degrees over the life of a coin.