10/24/19 Report,- The Havering Hoard. Wood Find. Wheat Cents. About Cleaning Coins.

Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Source: BBC.com (See link below.)

The group of 453 artefacts found in Havering, east London, is the third largest ever discovered in the UK...

The find, which dates from between 800BC and 900BC, was officially declared treasure by a coroner earlier this year.

The discovery, dubbed the Havering Hoard, was uncovered last September, and will form the centrepiece of a major exhibition from April.

Archaeologists believed the manner in which the weapons had been so carefully buried in groups close together suggested the site could have been a metal workers' former vault or an armoury recycling bank or exchange...

Here is the link for the rest of the article.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-50097646

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Wood Found by DJ Sunday

Find and photo by DJ

DJ said, "... it has several round holes and pieces of metal showing. The close up shows two pieces with the wood grain running at right angles."

Interesting.
--- I've mentioned recently about finding a wheat penny in change received at a Walmart a couple days ago. I was surprised to get another wheat penny in change just yesterday at a store about 20 miles away from the Walmart. That is two wheats in my last two shopping trips. Pretty unusual. Below are the two wheats I received in change. The one most recently received is on the right.

Two Wheat Pennies Recently Received in Change.

In a recent post I mentioned a few ways I think old coins end up in circulation. I thought of one more. Spome of the members of CoinCommunity.com mentioned that they sometimes return coins like that to circulation just to stimulate interest in the hobby. The coins shown above appear to me to have been harshly cleaned. You'll notice the very bright high spots that look like they have been really scrubbed. The 1950 D is in worse condition with surface pitting and also a strange patina on the depressed surfaces. It also has some green crud in tight protected areas. You can see that best in the photo on the right behind Lincoln's collar. In my opinion, it does not look like these coins were not owned by a serious collector, but perhaps dug. I doubt that any kind of serious collector would so harshly clean the coins. The one on the right with the surface pitting definitely looks like a dug coin to me. What do you think? Having received two wheats in change in such a short time span makes me wonder if there were a lot of wheats recently put into circulation by someone. Seems pretty unlikely to be coincidence, but it is possible I guess. If you are wondering how often it might happen by chance, I found a blog post where a fellow purchased 48 rolls of pennies in 2014 and recorded what he found. Here is what he said. I went to the bank and got $24 worth of pennies (48 rolls of 50) and sorted them.  On average there were 13.4 pre-1982 pennies in each roll, in percentage terms, 28.4%.  Some had as many as 20 and some had as few as 7.  There were also 5 wheat sheaf pennies in the lot and 10 Canadian cents.

Since that was done five years ago the odds might have changed some.

Anyhow the odds of finding a wheat cent in circulation, according to the experiment, is 5 in 2400 or 1 in 480 pennies.  Canadian cents were more likely than the wheat cents at a that time.  I understand that Canada no longer mints pennies.

Here is the link to that article. http://mattbussey.com/how-many-pre-1982-copper-pennies-are-still-in-circulation/ Here is an article about cleaning coins. Among other things, it tells how to tell if a coin has been cleaned, which they say should almost never be done.

Here is how they say you can tell if a coin has been cleaned.

A cleaned coin will have a dull, bright look – one that on a well-circulated coin would seem unnatural.

Old pennies that have been worn should not look bright orange and have flashy surfaces. Old, worn pennies should be medium to dark brown in color and have virtually no reflectivity on the surface at all. 

Old silver coins will look grey in color with darker patination around the devices, such as the lettering, date, and main design elements. A flashy, white silver coin that has clearly been worn is a clear giveaway that it has been cleaned. 

Uncirculated or about uncirculated coins should have lustrous surfaces and radiating lines that reflect shimmers of light in a cartwheel pattern as the coin is turned or rotated. 

The luster of a cleaned coin will be severely impaired, if not lost altogether. Therefore, if an uncirculated coin has been cleaned, the best way to tell is to see if it has any cartwheel luster. If it doesn’t, then don’t buy the coin.

Older coins that have been cleaned in the past may show evidence of a past cleaning in a few key ways:

Crud around design elements and lettering
Evidence of heavy, dark toning on some parts of the coin but not on others
Dull appearance in the fields

Here are a few occasions when they say it might be advisable to clean a coin.

(1) The coin has ugly and potentially damaging green polyvinylchloride (PVC) goo from an old plastic coin holder.

(2) The coin has loose dirt and debris on it. 

(3) An ancient coin needs cleaning for proper attribution or identification.

Here is that link.
https://coins.thefuntimesguide.com/cleaned-coins/ ---

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

Not much going on except for one undeveloped system down in the Gulf.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com

Not much surf in the forecast either. Happy hunting, TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/15/18 Report - Multiple Error Eight-Reale. 100 Top U. S. Error Coins. Coins and Cash.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

1775 8-reale Error Coin.
Source: MintErrorNews.com (See link below.)

But what has happened to this particular piece? First, it was struck slightly off-center to about 7:30 o’clock. Then it flipped over and was struck a second time, about 75% off-center to 7:00. However, during the second strike it was sandwiched between the obverse die on one side, and the obverse of an already struck coin on the other. This produced a partial brockage (indent of the the obverse of an already struck coin) on the obverse of our coin, and a clear flip-over, double-strike on the reverse. The 1775 date is indicated by the “75” that shows from the second strike on the reverse...

Here is the link for the rest of that article.

Source: https://minterrornews.com/issue3.pdf

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I've been spending some time looking through coins to see if I can find any good mint errors.  An error penny can be worth more than a Royal escudo.  Mint Error News lists one error penny that sold for 1.7 million dollars.  In fact they list 100 error coins, all of which sold for over $29,000.

Here is a list of the top 100.

https://minterrornews.com/news-1-10-12_top_100_prices.html

If you want to learn about war pennies struck on the wrong metal or three legged Buffaloes, take a look.

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I received a few thoughts on the mystery item I posted yesterday, but will wait a few more days to see if I get any more responses before I tell you what I think it is.  Please send your ideas on that.

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According to the Federal Reserve web site there is about thee times the amount of cash in circulation today as there was in 1997.

Today there is something over $1.6 trillion.  I don't know why there is so much increase.  I wouldn't expect that.

Here are some interesting tables.

Here is the source link for those tables.

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/how-many-dollar-bill-circulated/

I was trying to find how many coins are thought to be in circulation today, but couldn't find that.  I bet they have no idea how many are lost.

Over half of all coins produced in 2016 were pennies.

How many coins and bills are lost, collected or stored away is another thing.

Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net

3/16/15 Report - U. S. Mint Tests Coins Made Of Alternate Materials. Nonsense Pattern Coins. How To Build A Coin Counter & Identifier.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.

Table From U. S. Mint Study Showing Some Of The Metals Tested.
See link below.

The U. S. mint has been conducting studies to decide if U. S. coins could be made more cost-effectively.  After spending money on studies, they concluded that no change should be made now but that more studies should be conducted.

Most studies conclude that there should be more studies.  Why shut down the milk cow?

One of the big obstacles to changing our U. S. coins is the vending business, which would have to change all of their machines if the coins are changed.

Vending machines use both mechanical and electromagnetic methods for identifying coins.

Below is a link giving the results of one of the U. S. mint studies.  Despite the recommendation for no immediate change, it is interesting.  See the above table.

If coins were changed it would also mean that your discrimination settings would be off.  Some metals might make discriminating much more difficult. One metal that was tested but not shown in this table is aluminum.  Also steel and iron.

Here is one link to read about that.

http://www.coinnews.net/2014/12/15/us-mint-not-recommending-new-coin-compositions/

Here is a link to another report on one of the mint's studies.  This one discusses production costs of various alternatives and shows the results of some of their corrosion testing.

Nonsense patterns were used on test coins.  The test coins were made using the standard die striking process.  I wonder if any of the test coins got out of the mint.  One type featured Martha Washington.

I actually found catalog values for a 1759 Martha Washington test coin, which was actually made recently.  I was surprised that they have catalog values since they weren't supposed to leave the mint.  The values weren't extraordinarily high either for something that I would think should be very rare.

Here is a link showing one Martha Washington test coin and some test results.

http://news.coinupdate.com/us-mint-reports-findings-of-alternative-coin-materials-research-1765/

The total number of coins in circulation in the US is estimated as follows.

One-Cent: 240 billion 5-Cent: 29 billion Dime: 44 billion Quarter Dollar: 43 billion Half Dollar: 0.3 billion (from Method # 1 above) Dollar: 9 billion.  Total: 366 billion .


They speculated that of the estimated 366 billion coins in circulation 84% are being hoarded or in some type of storage.  They based their estimates upon data collected by other countries.  

I don't know exactly how  "hoarded" is defined.  I've never seen estimates of the number lost or destroyed by corrosion or whatever.  I bet that number is bigger than they think.  It has to be huge, and detectorists should be thanked for returning many lost coins to circulation.

Here are a number of recommendations offered by the mint.

• Maintain coin dimensions (thickness and diameter) for all future coins regardless of materials of composition since the conversion coins for coin processing equipment would be too large to justify any changes.
• Maintain the current materials of construction for the cent. After accounting for metal and production cost, copper plated steel one-cent coins would offer no cost savings compared to the current composition of copper-plated zinc. Aluminum alloys were fond to jam or destroy coin acceptance or coin handing equipment, removing this composition from consideration.
• Further develop copper based alloys for the composition of the nickel. Although these alloys would not bring costs to parity with face value, they would produce material cost savings. The alloys considered have a yellow cast color or golden hue color. The US Mint would achieve an annual cost savings of up to $16.7 million based on March 2012 metals pricing and 2011 production rates. There would be conversion costs for private sector coin acceptance equipment ranging from an estimated $11.3 million to $56.4 million depending on the alloy selected.
• Consider copper based alloys for use in the dime, quarter dollar, and half dollar coins. The US Mint would achieve an annual cost savings of approximately $2.2 million annually for the quarter dollar and $3.9 million annually for the dime based on March 2012 metal pricing and 2011 production rates. There would be conversion costs for private sector coin acceptance equipment estimated at $9.20 million for the quarter and $6.92 million for the dime. It was noted that one of the copper alloys had a slight yellow cast, which might cause confusion between the quarter and $1 coin.
• Maintain the current composition for the $1 coin, as none of the alternative material costs showed an improvement in cost.
• Continue long range research of surface engineering of zinc or steel for one-cent coin as a useful technology to reduce costs associated with copper plating. The report mentions the example of inexpensive paints or colored particles on bare zinc covered with a wear resistant coating.
• Continue research and development on stainless steel as a potential alternative for lower denomination coins. Also continue development of stainless steel alloys clad to copper alloy for higher denomination coinage to mimic the current electromagnetic signature of the dime, quarter, and half dollar.

My guess is that before we see many changes in our coins they'll go out of use.  I'd say digital.  Something like BitCoin.   There are now vending machines that will let you pay via smartphone.

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I thought you might find the following interesting.  Here is a diagram for a coin identifier and counter such as would be used in one of those coins-for-cash machines you see.

Basic Schematic For Coin Identifier and Counter.
Source: Following link.

The following article explains the diagram and shows you how to build your own coin counter and identifier.

http://www.best-microcontroller-projects.com/coin-detector-and-counter.html

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On the Treasure Coast we'll have a calm surf.  The wind will be changing.  Tomorrow it will becoming from the south.  The low tide is around 11:30 today.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net