Posted 06/13/2011 07:15 am
If this is a real effect, then I assume it has to do with availability of coinage. For most of the first century of your country's existence, coins were hard to come by, especially in the frontier regions far from the mint-cities. So they tended to stay in circulation for longer. We see a similar effect here in Australia with old British coins that were used here before we got our own coinage in 1910. Most of the 1800s coins found here are worn flat, because shipping in replacements from the other side of the world was not cost-effective.
But it's possible that what you're observing may be an illusion, caused by two other factors.
US coins in unworn condition aren't cheap, because coin collecting is far more popular in America than it is in most other countries. That, combined with your large population, creates huge demand, which drives up prices. American coins are always more expensive than an equally rare non-American coin in the same condition. So, for the same amount of money, you can buy a worn-flat US coin or a rather nice foreign coin. This can create the perception that US coins are always more worn.
Then there's design. Most American collectors will admit that their early coins aren't among the world's most aesthetic coinages. They simply weren't designed to look good once they became worn, so an amount of wear on a US coin that makes it look worn and ugly would make an equivalent-period foreign coin look only slightly worse.
I don't know whether any or all of these explanations are the truth. But those are possibilities that occur to me.
But it's possible that what you're observing may be an illusion, caused by two other factors.
US coins in unworn condition aren't cheap, because coin collecting is far more popular in America than it is in most other countries. That, combined with your large population, creates huge demand, which drives up prices. American coins are always more expensive than an equally rare non-American coin in the same condition. So, for the same amount of money, you can buy a worn-flat US coin or a rather nice foreign coin. This can create the perception that US coins are always more worn.
Then there's design. Most American collectors will admit that their early coins aren't among the world's most aesthetic coinages. They simply weren't designed to look good once they became worn, so an amount of wear on a US coin that makes it look worn and ugly would make an equivalent-period foreign coin look only slightly worse.
I don't know whether any or all of these explanations are the truth. But those are possibilities that occur to me.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
