Which Coin is Easiest to Authenticate?

[Recyclersteve]

I wanted to start a new thread that might provoke some differing opinions, so here we go. Which silver coin do you think is the easiest to authenticate and why? Forget about the values of the coins. Lets say you had piles of 1,000 of everything (1,000 junk silver dimes, 1,000 quarters, halves and silver dollars, 1,000 silver American Eagles, and perhaps 1,000 generic 1 ounce rounds). Let's assume there are no valuable dates or slabbed coins or valuable Uncs. in the piles. These are all raw coins. Which pile do you think you could authenticate the fastest and why? If you want to mention some type of silver that I've missed (Canadian, large bars, etc.), have at it!

I realize there may be legitimate reasons why one type of coin is easier for a certain type of person and someone else might find something else much easier for a reason the first person wouldn't even think of.

So let me start the ball rolling. I'm gonna say that for me the silver halves (whether they are Barbers, Walkers, Franklins or Kennedys) would be the easiest. I can drop a coin on a table from about 4" or so above the desktop surface and listen for that familiar high-pitched silver ring, which sounds totally different from copper/nickel or something counterfeit. You can argue that the 40% Kennedys would have to be separated from the 90%, but I still think that in terms of going through 1,000 coins quickly, it would be easier with halves. Dimes are so small they don't make much noise when you drop them. And the front of the quarter has pretty much looked the same since 1932, so that is a bit of a pain. For me, I feel like the silver eagles need to be tested by one of those metals analyzer devices and it would take a lot longer to do that with 1,000 coins.

What do you think?

[TwoAndAHalfCents]

Running a pile of silver Roosevelt dimes through a Ryedale should be pretty efficient.

[68Camaro]

On an ounce for ounce basis, doing dimes with the Ryedale might be time competitive with a verifyer acting on 1 oz bullion, and less strain, and the instrument is half the price or less; but it can only do dimes.

Since I have a metal analyzer (and if you have 1000 oz, you should have one), the largest sized, single-producer, .999 or higher coin would be the fastest to validate. Depending on whether or not they were in virgin int tubes and I was comfortable with weighing and sampling, it might go faster but worst case, with 1 oz coins and doing every one at ~10 per minute (average, including the time needed to open and re-stack tubes), with a break every 20 minutes, I could verify all 1000 ozs in a little over an hour. And I wouldn't have to drop them to do it.

If you had all Modern Maples they might go faster with just a visual check of the laser image, as long as we can trust the counterfeiters to not duplicate that. But it also makes for eye-strain after a time, when done en masse.

Generic bullion, without the certainty of consistent melt standards, might take a little longer - worst case - if there several suppliers involved and there were some differences coin-to-coin that had to be investigated.