Metals used on coinages

[gxseries]

A link that I have seen a looooooong time ago, except that I recently found it again.

 

Link

 

What are some of your favourite metals and / or alloys besides the typical pure quality precious metals?

 

I personally like aluminum bronze alloy as it can handle wear pretty sturdy. I still see such coins from 1984 circulating freely around Australia.

[Daniel]

I like aluminum-bronze, too. Also brass, particularly the way a Peruvian "Vicuña" coin with mint lustre almost looks like gold. Aluminum (believe it or not) is another favourite, but only with full mint bloom. My all-round favourite is copper-nickel with light toning.

[Trantor_3]

my favorite is silver.

 

but in non-precious metals, I kinda like stainless steel (e.g. brasil, italy) since they have a nice lok (in my opinion) and the metal is so tough, they wear only a bit

[Art]

copper is my absolute favorite.

[jlueke]

A nice bronze is my favorite. But many alloys can be attractive in full mint bloom.

[Sir Sisu]

I would have to say straight out nickel. It retains a luster-like shine even when worn and looks a lot like silver.

 

[Ætheling]

I like Tin myself. Although gold wins me over everytime. Silver is the benchmark.

[ccg]

Cu

 

Al is nice, but only in PF or UNC.

[tabbs]

Nickel (or some nickel alloy) and Nordic Gold are fine with me. While aluminum coins look OK, they are too light/"cheap" in my opinion. And I am not a big copper fan either.

 

Christian

[sbvenman]

Nickel (or some nickel alloy) and Nordic Gold are fine with me.

Christian

 

 

Can you explain what Nordic Gold is? I'm assuming it's not actually gold, though I could be wrong.

 

-Scott

[gxseries]

Scott, if you checked the homepage I listed, it should be in there. Here is what it is commented as:

 

Aluminium Bronze

Alloy

Copper-aluminium alloys, sometimes containing a small amount of manganese or nickel. They are yellow in colour and hard wearing. A modern example of its use is with the 5, 10 and 20 centime coins of France.

 

A variety called Nordic Gold is apparently being used for some Scandinavian coins, and also for the new 10, 20 and 50 eurocent coins because it does not contain nickel. It has a composition of 89% Cu, 5% Al, 5% Zn and 1% Sn.

 

Basically it is called nordic gold because of it's color appearance similar to the color of gold

[Ætheling]

Copper's alright if it's got a full bright lustre, that nice orange colour i like. But once it starts to go brown i'm not bothered anymore.

 

That said copper coins toned a particularly nice shade of brown can look nice (especially rather worn coins), my pet hate though is copper coins that are kinda halfway from lustrous to brown 9i.e patchy) and look like a brown coin that's had detergent spilt on them in places.