[HN Gopher] The Mystery of the Coin That Shouldn't Exist
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The Mystery of the Coin That Shouldn't Exist
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-01-08 12:23 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/PMjI0
| soneca wrote:
| TL;DR: it's a counterfeit (an old one).
|
| The article itself is short and interesting, so worth reading,
| but the title is a bit misleading
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is a funny article, IMO it is pretty well written in terms
| of tone and pacing, they build up nicely through the process
| that is used to study the coins. I really expected a better
| punchline than, basically, it was a counterfeit, nobody really
| cared due to the economic situation at the time, and that's
| about all we know.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Yeah, the alloy confirms what the date suggests - that its
| unofficial, and also that it's not modern (well, duh -
| default assumption would be that it was contemporary with the
| coins it was trying to pass as).
|
| The suggestion that this counterfeit was produced abroad
| since "nickel silver wasn't widely used for [official] coins
| in Peru" seems to be an entirely illogical conclusion! We
| already know it's a counterfeit, so practices of the official
| mint are irrelevant. Default assumption, absent any other
| evidence, would be that it was produced domestically as most
| counterfeits are.
|
| Slow news day at the NY Times I suppose, although better way
| to fill the pages than speculating about Taylor Swift's
| sexuality.
| Kranar wrote:
| Yes but it's also really cool that it's not a modern day
| counterfeit but rather a counterfeit from that time period.
| _visgean wrote:
| > but the title is a bit misleading
|
| the title is "The Mystery of the Coin That Shouldn't Exist"
| given that it is counterfeit I would say its fair to say it is
| a "coin that should not exist"
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| ATM, there are a number of ebay listings listings for
| uncirculated 1917 Costa Rica 1 colon bills. They were printed by
| a US note company and look a lot like US notes of the day.
|
| I don't have the history of why all these bills suddenly appeared
| in the market or why they were never circulated. Wikipedia notes
| that the Costa Rican president was overthrown in Jan of that
| year.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| I saw the title and wondered if it was about one of the coins
| from Mel's hole. I would love to have one of those examined, if
| they ever existed.
| UberFly wrote:
| Mel's Hole never existed, so...
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It's strange to me that you'd spend days making a mold as similar
| to an actual dime as possible, then decide to change the year
| from the reference dime.
|
| Maybe they thought it'd be suspicious to show up to a bank with
| rolls of never used 1896 dimes? Then you'd think the banks would
| notice the problem immediately, but they might have been too
| desperate for coins to care.
|
| Or they did notice, and the counterfeiters changed the year
| shortly after.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| I remember from the arcade days, operators would paint quarters
| for testing so they could remove them from the revenue share
| numbers. Maybe this was a sort of shibboleth? Greshams law says
| bad money displaces good money, so a lower value coin would let
| an organized operator pull silver out and know their own. More
| likely just an error, but possible?
| hristov wrote:
| I think the counterfeiters simply assumed incorrectly that the
| Peruvian mint makes new coins on an annual basis. They did not
| put in the year of the coin they were copying because their
| coins would be brand new and shiny and it would be suspicious
| to see old coins being so new. They simply put in the year of
| the counterfeit or even a future year based on planned release
| of the counterfeit coins.
|
| The counterfeiting was probably done in the US or Europe. The
| nickel silver process was not known in Peru at the time and
| Peru is a small country so it is doubtful someone could start
| minting coins using new equipment and a novel process without
| the information getting out.
|
| But somewhere faraway in the US or Europe somebody could use an
| existing mill to mint some obscure foreign coins without even
| the workers suspecting it is illegal. The counterfeiter can say
| he has a contract to make the coins from the Peruvian
| government and I doubt anyone would have raised an eyebrow.
| Thus, the counterfeiter probably did not have good information
| about the Peruvian mint's plans to mint that particular coin
| that particular year.
|
| As far as the banks, no counterfeiter shows up at a bank with a
| roll of their fake currency. Bankers are trained to recognize
| fakes. The counterfeiter would try to place it in the stream of
| trade, so that by the time they reach a bank the fake coins are
| mixed with real coins and are submitted by a trusted customer.
|
| The counterfeiter would probably go to a port town find some
| poor and suspicious looking merchants and use the fake coins to
| buy some peruvian goods at somewhat generous prices.
| thewarpaint wrote:
| I can't help but mildly cringe when I read sentences like "the X
| that shouldn't exist", for example when applied to the
| Antikythera mechanism. It's a weird way to mask our ignorance
| about the item being discussed.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Ironically this rare counterfeit is probably worth more than a
| 1898 dinero.
| nlh wrote:
| Like saying "Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!", post a coin
| article on HN and I shall appear ;)
|
| A few interesting (perhaps) tidbits of nerdery:
|
| 1:
|
| _> "But when Dr. Ortega and Ms. Bravo Hualpa bombarded the 1899
| coin with X-rays and measured the light it re-emitted, they
| determined that the dinero was largely made of copper, zinc and
| nickel._
|
| This sounds extremely fancy (and technically it is), but what you
| may find surprising is that the technique they used (XRF eg X-Ray
| Fluorescence analysis) is so useful in the coin/bullion industry
| that you can buy handheld "XRF guns" that perform a metal
| composition analysis on the spot and present the readout in a
| very easy-to-consume way on a small LCD screen. And you can buy
| them on Amazon!
|
| https://www.amazon.com/XRF/s?k=XRF
|
| (They are not cheap.) But they are ridiculously useful and it
| feels like a magic trick to point it at a piece of metal and have
| an instant elemental readout. As you might guess, 99% of this is
| to check whether a piece of gold/silver is actually gold/silver.
|
| 2:
|
| Unlike TFA's example, among US coins there are lots of
| counterfeits out there that ARE made out of the proper base metal
| (typically 90% gold, as much US gold coinage is composed).
|
| Why on earth would someone do that? The answer is that in the
| mid-20th century, many countries (including the US) imposed
| restrictions on import and export of gold but had exclusions for
| certain types of currency. So one clever way to transport
| quantities of foreign gold into the United States was to make
| sure you were transporting exempted US currency. So many
| countries developed sophisticated counterfeiting techniques to
| turn non-US-coinage gold into US-coinage gold. This worked quite
| well for getting gold into the US but has been a thorn in the
| side of collectors here for a while, since you might buy a rare
| US gold coin that's actually truly made of gold and yet is still
| a counterfeit :(
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _since you might buy a rare US gold coin that 's actually
| truly made of gold and yet is still a counterfeit :(_
|
| That's fascinating! What a funny situation.
|
| Is there actually any way to detect a counterfeit coin that is
| made of the right materials? It seems like all you've got to go
| on is the physical shape and relief. But that seems far easier
| to match perfectly than paper bills.
|
| Is there at least any way to tell "old" counterfeits from
| modern ones?
| nlh wrote:
| Yes, thankfully, there is a way to detect the fakes. It's
| really about the level of detail that you look at. An
| untrained eye probably would not be able to tell the
| difference, but to someone who looks at the real deal day in
| and day out, the fakes are often very very easy to spot.
|
| Coin nerds study the real ones in excruciating detail - to
| the point that people catalog not only the various dies that
| were used to strike various coins but the states of those
| dies (i.e. Early die state == pristine coins. Middle die
| state == a crack or chip might have started to form which
| presents as a raised line or spot on the surface of struck
| coins. Late die state == chunks of the die might be
| missing.). This is often done through reverse engineering --
| examining enough examples of struck coins to identify
| differences in the the dies used. The dies themselves can be
| identified through unique markers -- a polish line here, the
| exact positioning of a letter, a microscopic defect, etc.
|
| So when you are able to identify the known dies, a
| counterfeit will stick out like a sore thumb. And if it was
| made from a cast copy of a known-good coin, then those will
| have their own telltale giveaways.
|
| In short: The counterfeits will always have subtle
| differences.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... restrictions on import and export of gold but had
| exclusions for certain types of currency
|
| I think something not entirely dissimilar is still true in some
| cases: there are limits, in various countries around the world,
| as to how much you can cross the border with without warning
| the customs _but_ for some coins it 's the face value, not the
| actual value, that counts. So for example someone can take
| shitloads of $50 gold coins that are actually worth $2000
| (instead of $50) and legally cross the border with 40x the
| actual limit without having to warn the customs.
|
| I may be mistaken though.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > you can buy handheld "XRF guns" that perform a metal
| composition analysis on the spot
|
| Oh wow that's really neat, feels like something out of Star
| Trek (Tricorder).
|
| > (They are not cheap.)
|
| Ok, but what is "not cheap"? A hundred? A couple hundred? Might
| be a cool thing to have
|
| _Clicks link_
|
| Oh dear god, $20K-40K. Yep, I think I'll pass but super cool
| nonetheless. Thank you for introducing me to that technology!
| djmips wrote:
| A Ben Krasnow demo and teardown (Applied Science YouTube)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U
| nlh wrote:
| That is awesome!! Thanks for sharing that link.
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