cladking

These are actually Dutch Antilles. They all have mintages under a million but they aren't too hard to find. with moderns it's hard to tell what they're worth because the price guides don't care and usually grossly underreport the true value. If any are true Uncs I'd hold on to them. The best date is 1962 which should bring at least a few dollars.

They were able to start transitioning away from explosion bonding pretty early and by about 1970 all clad was rolled rather than explosions bonded. My understanding though is the metals were forced together hydraulic and the dynamite completed the process? I used to kid people that these were guaranteed for 50 years and then they'd all start failing explosively.

In 1999 the thickness and weight of planchets was reduced by 1%. I believe this was done to avoid removing old worn coins from circulation; if the new coins were lighter the worn old clads wouldn't show up. Perhaps the mint forgot they had done this and when the states program was over went back to the old thickness and it won't work. It should be easy enough to check. Just get BU rolls of states coins and compare them to a BU roll of parks coins.

If you really care just my the $2 folders to hold coins and save the nicest of each date. This can be used as a reference collection to search for the rare coins. Best of all it's a lot of fun to fill them. There are more rare coins in circulation than ever before because people aren't looking for them and haven't in half a century.

I did it for decades with an eye toward using it for world travel. I actually accumulated enough for airfare. I was able to put together some real nice sets of XF/ AU coins as well and some of these coins list for a lot of money now. Look at the prices of 1950's German coins for instance. People think all these coins must be common because they were made in huge numbers but most haven't been saved at all.

For the main part US coins have never been removed from circulation in this country and destroyed. There are numerous exceptions such as the Pitman act of 1918 that destroyed millions of silver dollars, the demonetization of the trade dollar, and the treasury recall of circulating silver in '68/ '69. Most had already been removed by the public. The mint also had always pulled out damaged and excessively worn silver for redemption and this did account for a significant amount over the years. Still the government doesn't pull out mutilated coin. Most of this ends up in the garbage stream because of the high costs borne by the owner to redeem it. Counting houses probably redeem anything that won't go through their automatic counters but these are set so just about anything will go through. Municipal incinerators often retriev coin after they've been burned and ship them for redemption (New York, I believe), by the truck load. A lot of our old quarters are getting very worn. It might not be many years until they have to be separated out. They started making new quarters on 1% thinner planchets in 1999 probably to keep the range in weight of quarters from growing too large.

I've put lots of marginally collectible and high grade clad into circulation. I used to get a lot of this stuff at face and I can't save it all so it would go into circulation a few here and a few there. I put almost an entire bag of choice '82 quarters into circulation back in '82/ '83.

The uneven rim on the dime is caused by a misaligned die. Usually the hammer die isn't straight in the press. For these modern dimes that usually means one of the four movin dies on a horizontal quad press is misaligned. I got a nice well, stuck slider unc 1974 quarter last week. This is a spectacular find on a few levels but just finding a well struck coin of this date is a little unusual. It's probably from a mint set but thee's no way to know.

It's not unusual for the zinc coated steel cents to rust only on the edge. These probably happen mostly in paper rolls and it is nearly common on uncirculated coins.

The oldest coin that was actually tendered to me in change was an 1892 Columbian Exhibition half dollar in G back in 1961 or so. I have gotten older coins in rolls and the like such as the silver dollar rolls and I've spent many coins dating back to the 1810's because they were culls. I've even spent two and three cent pieces. Culls have good value now but ten or twenty years ago you could barely give them away.

I'd put the few nicest of each roll into albums and the rest into folders and auction them on ebay. You might want to run a test auction first or check completed auctions but this would probably bring the best prices.

As possible I will always take the higher grade coins whether it's in a 69 holder, 70 holder, or raw. If I can't tell the difference between two coins I'll always take the cheaper. Frosting makes a difference to me with some coins. Where it does I might be willing to take a more heavily frosted coins in a slightly lower grade.

All money is and always has been what people think is money. When it was believed only gold was money then nothing else would substitute. If a coiner shorted the currency then people would lose confidence in the money and its value would be affected. When new sources of gold were found it would cause a revaluation in money. If people came to believe the treasury was short the money could collapse. Since gold was money and money was gold anything that damaged one damaged the other. And it happened. There were several crises which were caused by the perception of money. Gold didn't really protect anyone from government anyway since over time every single currency that ever existed was devalued by the government which issued it. Politicians love to spend money and don't always want to stop just because they run out but they still have the keys to the printing presses and the coining presses. If you want better money then vote for better politicians. The modern world will not function without factories and modern money which keeps them perating. Food no longer comes from the land and financial collapses are no longer an option. There is no law saying that people had to start using worthless paper rather than good gold. Precious metals were removed from money in a series of steps which started a long time ago. Even in the 19th century US if everyone went down to the bank to change their paper into gold they'd have been turned away. There was probably enough gold to back all the paper which would preclude a run on it but most of it was sitting in bars locked away in government vaults. People believed the paper was good as gold so they used it as money. Today people still believe the paper is good as gold so they use it as money. Indeed much money now is little more than electrons in a computer and still people will sell their soul for it.

To buy them you'll have to pay CDN ask probably. If no one can look them up I've got a couple month old sheet here but I think they've gone up a little. These are pretty easy to sell at bid unless you have only a few and then you may have to take 80 or 90% of bid.

Coins have been made of two bonded metals even in ancient times. They are also made with two distinct parts with an out side rim and an interior of a different kind of metal. Striking these with dies bonds the pieces together. These are quite common now days and are especially widely used in Europe. They are called bimetallic coins. While clad coins have been made of various materials it wasn't economically possible to fuse copper and copper nickel until the mid 1960's. These early coins were made from sheets of metal that had been "explosion bonded". A sheet of very thin cu/ni (75%cu and 25% ni) was laid down flat with a heavier sheet of pure copper placed on top. Then a final sheet of cu/ni the same thickness as the bottom sheet was placed on top. While being pressed a charge of dynamite was detonated above it to force the metals to fuse together. If you look at the edge of a clad coin you'll see that one side or the other of the edge has a silvery look like the faces of the coin. This is caused when the clad sheet is sent to the blanking press and planchets are cut from it. The side with the cutting die on it will be silvery and and the opposite side will appear coppery where the die smeared metal over it. Panama is the only other country to use these planchets. They were purchased from the US mint to make their 25c coins. I believe Ball Corporation also sold them some strip or planchets.

[q]When I think modern, I think of the current base metal/clad coinage era. That pretty much goes for any country. I do not think that is the 'accepted' definition, though, especially among older or long time collecters.[/q] Older collectors often discount post 1964 coins all together. When they use the term modern they are talking about 1934 to '65 issues. There are really lots of different eras in coins and they vary from one country to another. But it would seem the most dramatic change in coins and the way collectors percieve them occurred in 1964 so this makes a good dividing line to call the later ones "moderns".