I’m sure you are aware that your coin has a rough edge but do you know why? Well “back in the day” each coins value was based on the amount of gold or silver in it. A $10 gold coin had $10 worth of gold and a dime had 10 cents worth of silver. Some dishonest people would file the edges of a coin getting the extra gold or silver. So basically they turned a $10 gold coin into a $9 dollar gold coin, giving them an extra 10% off anything they bought since the change to the coin often went unnoticed. To prevent this the government started putting milled(rough) edges around the coin so if it had got filed down the naked eye could easily be able to tell.

Today coins are not made of gold or silver but people are just use to seeing a milled edge so they stay.

Did you know a single coin stamping machine can produce up to 10,000 coins in a minute?

One Response to “Why Coins have Ridges Around the Edge”
  1. themace says:

    i also heard it was so blind people could recognise which coins they were going to pay with, hence then different types of grooves, or lack there of with the penny

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