I got a coin that is very strange. It is nickel-sized and is round but the coin is not flat rather it is wavy; so it cannot be stored one on top of another. My friend says that it is an old Belgian 50 Francs but I can't find it listed anywhere. Why would a coin be minted that cannot be stored? Maybe it's a damaged coin as I cannot read the wording.
Sorry, I don't have a home PC. I use a public PC and it doesn't let me scan anything or post photos. From the side, the coin is wavy like a rippled potato chip.
Sorry, I don't have a home PC. I use a public PC and it doesn't let me scan anything or post photos. From the side, the coin is wavy like a rippled potato chip.
If you can't scan the item, then you can at least describe what is on either side of it as well as:
What type of metal is it? silver / copper/ brass/ aluminium?
What size is it? (compared with everyday coins you deal with) eg. is it dime sized or half dollar sized...larger / smaller?
Is the edge smooth or milled / any writing on it?
All these things help us to help you find out what it is you've got.
For what it is worth, no country I know of has deliberately struck a coin like that..excepting France, and even then it was made for the collector market (an issue commemorating the last Franc) as opposed to circulation.
However you do get machine tokens made like that (for telephones / fruit machines etcetera). I suspect it is either a machine token or a coin that someone has been fooling around with.
It sounds like it is a waffled (cancelled) coin. Many countries (including the US) have done and are doing this. For instance, we're making them "wavy" with our state quarters that are defective when they come out of the mint.
~AJ
There is a lot in this world I do not know, but that which I do know, I know well.
The Belgian mint (and many others) doesn't melt the demonetized coins themselves. And to be sure the coins don't turn up in circulation again, they get tortured. In case of the Euro countries, some national banks accept their former coins for a long period (Germany f.e.) so they don't want a doubtfull guy to hand them in again and again.
The U.S. just started this last year having bought the technology from Europe. They thought this would be a quicker way to get rid of damaged or error coins they produce but quickly found out many collectors would pay really big money to get their hands on one. A batch of damaged and waffled Missouri statehood quarters made it onto the open market and averaged around $70 each after being authenticated and slabbed. Rumor has it this WILL NOT happen again even though the company that buys the mint scrap, as it is called, takes legal ownership when it leaves the mint. Could get rather interesting over here in the near future. I have a set of waffled Belgium coins that were actually put out by the Belgium mint with a regular issue mint set of Euros in 2003 or 2004 (don't know without looking). The waffled coins were demonitized coins taken out of circulation when the euro was introduced. While it is a neat set to say I own I have no desire to collect mint scrap coins at this time. To each his own!
I have a set of waffled Belgium coins that were actually put out by the Belgium mint with a regular issue mint set of Euros in 2003 or 2004 (don't know without looking).
It's 2002.
I've seen coins being waffled. Man it hurts! Being a coin collector and working there is a real punishment. Seeing so many collectable coins which surely would fit in my collection. Not only the former currency is being waffled, also "foreighn coins" which are not legal tender anymore (f.e. Old pre decimal UK coins) and coins not worthed exchanging (yep, Lincoln cents and other small denominations) The metal is worthed more than the exchange rate.
Why does the mint bother to do this? can't they just throw the defective coin back and melt it down to sheet metal again?
Many mints no longer create their own strip or planchets. They buy them from outside suppliers. So they no longer have the furnaces and equipment to melt them down themselves. Instead they ship them back to the producers of the planchets or strip for recovery. (also since many coins are no longer made from a homoginous alloy, melting would result in a material not suitable for making into new strip directly. In some cases more metal has to be added to get the alloy right, and in others it has to be refined.)
But if they didn't do something to deface the coins before shipment they could be a potential target for theft and therefor have to be guarded. If they are defaced so they can't be spent then they are just so much scrap metal worth way less than the face value of the coins and not worth stealing due to the extreme difficulty in handling and the low return for the risk. So it saves the government money since they don't have to provide security for the trip back to the smelter. (plus the cost to bring the guards back.)
Last edited by Conder101; 09-19-2005 at 07:41 PM.
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Originally Posted by Myron 
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