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Someone told me to always use a rare earth magnet to check if a coin was legit, but I can't figure out if a regular (100lb pull) magnet you can get at harbor freight can do the same thing. Anyone have experience or have seen anything online about this? Google has not been helping.

I heard that before too but i have no idea if it make a difference to use a neodymium magnet or a regular one.
I currently use a old hard drive magnet of nickel plated neodymium.

Magnet's a magnet, the chemicals it's made of is not relevant.

Neat sig quote. I guess there's different types of "panics", and we have a honey getting lined up.

It does matter. I bought the 100 lb pull from HF and it does NOTHING. Go with a small neodymium magnet. It works AMAZINGLY well. You can move silver coins and copper ones with it. I got one from Men**ds I think.

Look up the diamagnetism of silver and other elements and do your homework.

Edited because I originally incorrectly wrote paramagnetism instead of diamagnetism.

Thanks Road Runner.... I will research.... if gold and silver is magnetic, how can you use it for detecting counterfiets?

Gold and silver are not magnetic in the normal sense. Nickel and iron will stick to any type of magnet. So if your coin is attracted to the magnet you know it contains either of those elements and is not copper/silver/gold. No real coins I know of are a blend of nickel and silver. I don't know nothing about the paranormal of the paramagnetic.

Road Runner, I took some very strong earth magnets I have against some 90% halves. I got them to move. Not sure how or why but interesting

Saw this earlier in the week. It appears that a REM will attract to silver, just not strongly....lead in turn acts like the plastic did.

Thanks, cool video! I now know more about magnetism. You can tell in the video just by the look of the bars which one was lead. However, I have some experience as I bought a lead bar someone was selling as silver once but got my money back. You can also tell if something is lead by rubbing it on a piece of paper. it will leave a grey mark, silver won't.

My bad, I mixed up the types of magnetism.

Gold, silver, and copper, along with most elements, are *diamagnetic*, NOT paramagnetic, as my previous post said.

Great Video there! However, I'm confused about something. Elements which are diamagnetic aren't supposed to be attracted to a rare earth magnet. The silver should be repelling, not attracting, in the video. Hmm...time for some more science homework.

Remember, if you do purchase any of these magnets, use EXTREME caution. REMs are very powerful and can mess up expensive electronic equipment.

One more thing...rare earth magnets are surprisingly inexpensive for their power. Shop around, there are plenty to choose from. Oh, and MAKE SURE they actually are rare earth magnets. Some magnets are "really strong" but they're just big normal magnets. I don't care how big or strong they are, they won't interact with silver, gold, copper, or cupronickel if they're not neodymium.