I will never tell anyone that I'm going to write an article today.
In the end, it took me five days to get around to it. It's better late than never.
I tried photographing the coins from a different angle. Well, why not. But I will also stick to my classic way of photography.
Austria, 4 gulden (= 10 franc), 1892, diameter 19 mm, weight 3.226 g of gold, purity 900/1000, newly minted
Austria, 1 ducat, 1915, diameter 20 mm, weight 3.491 g of gold, purity 986/1000, newly minted
Austria, 10 korona, 1897, diameter 20 mm, weigt 3.387 g of gold, purity 900/1000 This coin is also minted with the year 1915 to this day. But this is an original.
I showed these gold coins from my collection just to illustrate. But I want to talk a little bit about coin fraud. Not about coin counterfeiting, but about the fact that some people have always been very imaginative when it comes to crime.
You all probably know why coins have indentations or inscriptions on the edges. Someone once tried that it would be quite convenient to take a knife and remove some of the metal from the coins. It's a crude but effective scam. And it can't be done by a poor man. What good would it do him to steal one coin in this way?
The next scam is even more subtle. It only involves gold coins. You simply drill a hole in the coin and scrape out the gold. All that's left is a hollow gold shell.
Is that unbelievable? But from the 16th to the 19th century, it was really done. This scam required good tools and experience. Again, it couldn't be done by poor people. You had to have an outlet for the gold you got. Often the fraud was perpetrated by goldsmiths, money changers, alchemists.
What was the defense against such "improved" coins? The easiest thing to do was to bite them. When they were hollow, they broke through.
However, a clever fraudster managed to pour tin or lead into the coin instead of gold. The coin resisted the teeth. What's next?
The cautious recipient clinked the coin on the table. When the clink of metal was "strange", he rejected it. Or he could have tried to spin the coin. If it was of the same metal, it was successful. If there were multiple metals, it was poorly balanced and didn't spin. Then the recipient refused the coin.
That's enough for today. I hope my English was a little more understandable. Did I write something everyone knows, or did I add something interesting? I'll try to write a little more over the weekend. But I know me. I don't know how it's gonna turn out.
I promised myself that I would write at least 24 articles by January 25th. So this is the eighth one.
