Re: Trying to combat the counterfeit silver problem!
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 4:30 pmZenOps wrote:You know... I'm kind of getting meh, to the idea of counterfeit coinage.
We in Canada have been circulating 98% iron cored coinage posing as nickel since 2000. Our nickel, dime, and quarter are just posing as having some value, and now our dollar and two dollar coins are also just iron cored with a 2% nickel coating (I still consider iron to be worth $13 per ton, and nickel $52,000 per ton)
The US dime to half dollar have been posing as nickel for a long time as well. I mean really, US coins made after 1965 are just basically copper pennies of varying size, pretending to be nickel with an 8.33% partial covering of cupronickel.
Sure you *could* blame China for "counterfeit" coins. But every single Canadian coin made this year on (from penny to toonie) is basically counterfeit as well. As are all US coins that are pretending to be made of a significant amount of nickel (nevermind silver). I mean really, you would need 165 US dimes to get one ounce of nickel metal.
It all depends on perspective I guess.
I wouldn't say US coins are posing as nickel. If anything, they're posing as silver, but it's not really even that. It's just aesthetic. The connection in most people's minds between valuable metal and money disappeared long ago...