What's A Coin?

I honestly do not get the point of this thread. Why it is so important whether a certain object is a coin or rather not?

It appears to me that the whole discussion is a "modern" one. Until a few decades ago, there were coins, tokens and medals. "Borderline items" were few and clearly identifyable, such as commemorative coins (think US commems) or circulating medallic issues (think Spanish proclamation medals).

Now we have non-circulating legal tender issues, bullion coins and fantasy coins.

Is the 2014 Proof 5 dollars gold Baseball Hall of Fame coin really a coin? It is clearly never ever going to be used as a means of payment by anybody. It is unusually shaped, it is made such that you shouldn't take it out of the plastic holder it comes in, it is a denomination that does not exist in circulation, and its worth is not determined by the denomination that is stamped on it. Yet it is a legal tender issue by an existing country.

Whether you like to collect modern NCLT issues from the US mint, medallic art or baseball ephemera, you will want this item. But if you are a collector of US coins, but not Mr. Eliasberg and thus in need of reducing your want list to some extent, you might decide to exclude it as a non-circulating coin.

NCLT coins are merchandise produced by mints, some of which belong to the government of existing countries, others work for them, others are completely private enterprises. These products come with all degrees of authorization under coinage laws of issuing countries - one might even assign a percentage, with 100% being a proof strike of a circulating coin, 0% probably being the mentioned Zamunda coin, where the issuing authority does not even make an ironic claim for its legal existence. The case of the Somali guitar medallic coin-ish thingy, where the issuing country did not even know of it being issued under its name, might be somewhere around 10% on this scale...

Do you really need a precice and all-encompassing definition of "coin" to make up your mind whether you want to include a certain item in your collection? Or are you afraid you'd be forced to take a hammer to your Baseball Hall of Fame commem if a majority of numismatists one day decide it's not a coin?

Well made beavers, beaver pelts and card money were all once used in Canada. Since the made beaver and beaver pelt were used by the HBC I suppose they would be tokens (all though pelts didn't have a denomination or company inscribed on them) and card money was a good for token backed by a government so that means it was a coin since the government offered to redeem it? This is the problem with early vernacular currency. What would you call a slave braclet?

My point all along has been that they (the 5 oz ATB coins) are indeed coins. As for legal tender, the 5 oz ATB bullion and collector coins are legal tender as per my reading of this: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-ce...-tender.aspx.




Very, very simple - because there are rigid-minded ultra conservative types who go into rants and lambaste the rest of us for calling coins "coins".



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As a numismatist I usually follow the three category system with my collection. Coins, tokens, medals. To each their own. And although the government has seen fit to give certain bullion coins legal tender status, I do kinda consider them "fake coins" or simply government issued bullion medals. lol

One great example is the first gold coin I ever found and purchased. It was a Swiss twenty franc 1949. That particular year they minted many times more than the previous years and by that point in history it was more of a bullion coin, than meant for currency, since gold was at an all time high a couple years ago, I sold it for a very nice profit. I knew that it was valued way more at its metal content than its face value or numismatic value would ever achieve again. And even though it was sentimental to me as my first gold find, I had to let it go because it was at its time, fetching $370 for it. If it had been an earlier date or a key date it's numismatic value coupled with my own sentimental value would have allowed me to keep it in good conscience. But being that it had zero numismatic value and gold was so high at nearly $2000 per ounce it had to go lol. By the way, I found this coin in a dealers world junk bin for only ten cents :)

Only found one gold coin in six years of searching junk bins, but it was awesome, when I caught sight of it near the bottom of one bin my heart nearly stopped :)

SAP:




Point taken! However, as I pointed out, with the advent of non-circulating legal tender issues, we do not have a clear cut separator between coins and non-coins anymore, only varying degrees of "coin-ishness". Which is exactly why mints go through all kinds of hoops to make their merchandise as coin-ish as possible (and will call all their products "coins", regardless of how little coin-ish they may turn out to be).

And, as I see it, this is the reason why we have this discussion here. What started out as proof strikes of circulating coins for collectors (or 1804 dollars for presentation sets, if you wish), has now turned into oversized precious metal medallic reproductions of circulating coins or guitar-shaped colored coins from Somalia that have absolutely nothing to do with Somalia at all. I think every collector has to define for him or herself where exactly along this line the coin ends and the medallic item starts.

tenbobbit:




I don't know what your areas of interest are, but let's just assume for a second it were the "guitar coin" posted above:
It neither buys, nor is it exchanged, won nor worn. So what would you call it?