Wear and Tear of the Coinage
It has been discovered by the Mint authorities that the intelligent or intelligible life of coins is much shorter than it was prior to the introduction of the railway system and cheap travelling. People move about now more frequently than they used, and so does money. Whether the former wear out sooner from their greater activity is a problem for social economists, but that the latter does is certain. Towards the close of the last century careful experiments deduced the fact that deterioration among ten-year-old silver coins of the various denominations was as follows:—Crowns, 3½ per cent.; half-crowns, 10 per cent.; shillings, 24½ per cent.; and sixpences, 38 2-10ths per cent. Now, the loss is nearly as follows on coins of the same age:—Crowns, 5 per cent.; half-crowns, 12 per cent.; shillings, 30 per cent.; sixpences, 45 per cent.; and threepences, over fifty per cent. This increase is evidently due to “fast living,” so to speak, and the weakest individuals; or, at any rate, the smallest, suffer most from its consequences. The gold coinage does not deteriorate in anything like the same ratio, and this from obvious causes. It is not subjected to anything like the same course of treatment. It moves in higher and more circumscribed circles, is only a legal tender when of legal weight, and is therefore nursed with more care under the porte-monnaie system. Of copper and bronze moneys, pence and halfpence suffer the most rapid deterioration, farthings being the longest lived of the three denominations. They are all tokens of value merely, and their shortcomings are less noticed, and, indeed, of far less consequence to the public.—Mechanics’ Magazine.