thedeadpoint Posted March 13, 2009 Report Share Posted March 13, 2009 I'm watching a show on minting coins. They mentioned that at the West Point mint, gold strips must be 92/1000ths of an inch thick before punching out blanks, with an error of 1/10,000th of an inch. I imagine the man hours and machine costs to maintain those standards are enormous. Why should the government put so much emphasis on coins with those tight standards? I understand that you don't want off-centered, poorly stuck coins representing your country but at what point does the cost to standardize outweigh the value? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Stilson Posted March 13, 2009 Report Share Posted March 13, 2009 If under the amount can you imagine the up roar in not only the collector side but bullion folks. "You shorted me this is not one ounce." or "The Ultra High Relief is not ultra high since it was shorted metal". If I remember correctly the blanks are contracted out. If a company were to short the thickness by a few thousands you could be talking major over payment. If it happened on the over side I wonder if problems on the minting process could occur. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedeadpoint Posted March 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2009 Good analysis, Mark. Do you know how tight circulating coin standards are? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scottishmoney Posted March 13, 2009 Report Share Posted March 13, 2009 When the first AGE's went out back in 1986 quite a few of the 1/4 and or 1/2 ounce coins were infinitesimally underweight vs. published standards for the coins. It did cause some consternation and the mint had to tighten it's production standards by reworking their tolerances. Frankly people think they are getting slighted, and will not buy the coins. Think of it this way, what if you purchased say 100 of the 1/2 coins and their weight was off by only 1/2%, you would have been missing a quarter of an ounce. At gold's current price of $927.10, you would have been shorted by $231. The programme you watched is fascinating, I have seen it several times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scottishmoney Posted March 13, 2009 Report Share Posted March 13, 2009 Let me add, the tolerances for circulating coinage are much more reasonable, they are mainly concerned with the coins working in vending machines and not being mistaken for Canadian, Mexican or whatever else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedeadpoint Posted March 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2009 Let me add, the tolerances for circulating coinage are much more reasonable, they are mainly concerned with the coins working in vending machines and not being mistaken for Canadian, Mexican or whatever else. Ooh. here's another questions that (I doubt) could get answered: what are the tolerances on vending machines for coins? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
just carl Posted March 13, 2009 Report Share Posted March 13, 2009 Statistics & Tolerences noted and those actually followed are not always the same. Most organizations realize that not to many really measure, weigh, test products for extreame accuracy. And as to tolerences for vending machines. Those too are vague depending on the manufacturer, people that maintain them, how they are set up, etc. Some you can set to be very accuate and some very loose with what they accept. Remember the pay phones. There were basically no tolerances in most of those. In fact it used to be a kind of joke if an operator asked you to deposit xxx amount of coins. People that knew the workings, carried tunning forks and used those for the operator. She had really no way except by sound to know what you did. In the Nuclear Industry the construction of everything in catagory 1 areas was SUPPOSED to be extreamely accurate and if you checked with the NRC you would find that there was no tolerances in those areas. However, if something was installed wrong, that became the tolerance for that item. Just entered as an ECN or many other acceptable explanations. Not to knock the accuracy of statistics on manufacturing and thier tolerances but working in the industries where exactness was SUPPOSED to be exact, makes a person a little sketical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtryka Posted March 14, 2009 Report Share Posted March 14, 2009 If they weren't talking about gold, the tolerances wouldn't be an issue since the metal content of coins is not a driver for circulating clad coinage. Back under the gold standard, the coins were all assayed from every mint to ensure the exact amount of gold or silver that was supposed to be in the coins were in the coins. That's the difference when a dollar is defined as 412.5 grains of 0.900 fine silver and the price of gold was set at $20.67 per ounce vs. the dollar is defined by whatever we say it is (i.e. her are some pretty green pieces of paper for you)! Modern bullion coins are purely metal, the face value is just a vestage of the old gold standard, so nothing is more important that the amount of gold contained in the coins, hence the tight tolerances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tabbs Posted March 14, 2009 Report Share Posted March 14, 2009 Ooh. here's another questions that (I doubt) could get answered: what are the tolerances on vending machines for coins? As just carl wrote, it basically depends on what the manufacturer sets the tolerance to. Some machines now are kind of flexible when it comes to weights, as long as other parts of a coin "profile" (magnetism, conductivity, etc.) are OK. Here in the EU we have a tolerance "band" of 3% (from -2 to +1 percent) according to the Commission recommendation for euro coins. Manufacturers of blanks have a fudge factor of 3% per piece and, per 100 pieces, an "overall tolerance" of 1% ... Christian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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