Colourised Coins

It is indeed illegal to deface coins and currency in the US:

United States Code
TITLE 18
PART I
CHAPTER 17
§ 331. Mutilation, diminution, and falsification of coins

"Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes,
falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of
the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current
or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States;
or whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or
sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into
the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered,
defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or
lightened— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
five years, or both."

All that said, people have been defacing US coins for a couple centuries for purposes of jewelry, art, love tokens, hobo tokens, and whatever without serious prosecution. I suspect the key word is "fraudulently" wherein someone could (and probably would) be prosecuted if they defaced a coin with the intent to defraud someone else (e.g., file down a cent to the same size as a dime) rather than deface a coin for other purposes.

The term "fraudulant" refers to the denomination only.

If you look at the terms "alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States" you will see how this applies. In years past, the Mint used edge lettering and reeding to keep people from "lightening" the coins. The "Mutilation" and "diminishes" actually came from the Reales of Eight coins. In the early years, people would cut the coin into bits (pieces) to use as smaller change. Each bit was (if properly cut) 12 1/2 cents each. The "alters", "impairs", "falsifies", "defaces" and "scales" all refer to altering the value of the coin.

Technically, altering a coin with paint, gold, silver, platinum or applying stickers DOES NOT fall under any of the guidelines of altering the denomination.

Now there are two very common alteration coins that are in violation of the law. Two headed or Two tailed coins, and the altered Mule coins. Quarter-Dollar, Half Dollar-Quarter, and so on.

So you mean to say that virtually any hobby magician in the US in possession of a double headed coin is in violation
Not to speak of the very common coin in a bottle which was sawn into three pieces to start with

quote:

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Not exactly, but could be if the coin is no longer usable. However, the FED banks will exchange mutilated coins and currency if they can be identified.

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I remember reading somewhere that they have a whole unit dedicated to identifying burned money, coins and paper.

Here is a commercial company that handles mutilated coins:

http://www.gmcoin.com/index.shtml

Here are the U.S. Mint guidelines:

http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_min...ecifications