A coin is a piece of hard material that is standardized in weight, is produced in large quantities in order to facilitate trade, and primarily can be used as a medium of exchange or legal tender.
Coins are usually metal or a metallic material and sometimes made of synthetic materials, usually in the shape of a disc, and most often issued by a government. Coins are used as a form of money in transactions of various kinds, from the everyday circulation coins to the storage of large numbers of bullion coins. In the present day, coins and banknotes make up currency, the cash forms of all modern money systems. Coins made for paying bills and general monetized use are usually used for lower-valued units, and banknotes for the higher values; also, in many money systems, the highest value coin made for circulation is worth less than the lowest-value note. In the last hundred years, the face value of circulation coins has usually been higher than the gross value of the metal used in making them; exceptions occurring when inflation causes the metal value to surpass the face value, causing the minting authority to change the composition and the old coins to begin to disappear from circulation (see Gresham's Law.) However, this has generally not been the case throughout the rest of history for circulation coins made of precious metals.
Exceptions to the rule of coin face-value being higher than content value, also occur for some bullion coins made of silver or gold (and, rarely, other metals, such as platinum or palladium), intended for collectors or investors in precious metals. Examples of modern gold collector/investor coins include the American Gold Eagle minted by the United States, the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf minted by Canada, and the Krugerrand, minted by South Africa. The American Gold Eagle has a face value of US$50, and the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coins also have nominal (purely symbolic) face values (e.g., C$50 for 1 oz.); but the Krugerrand does not.
Historically, a great number of coinage metals (including alloys) and other materials (e.g. Porcelain) have been used practically, artistically, and experimentally in the production of coins for circulation, collection, and metal investment, where bullion coins often serve as more convenient stores of assured metal quantity and purity than other bullion.
Coins have long been linked to the concept of money, as reflected by the fact that in some other languages the words "coin" and "currency" are synonymous. Fictional currencies may also bear the name coin (as such, an item may be said to be worth 123 coin or 123 coins).
Read more about Coin: The Value of A Coin, History, Coin Debasement, Other Uses, Features of Modern Coins, Gallery
Other articles related to "coin, coins":
... Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) is an authentication and grading service for rare coins ... PCGS was started by seven coin dealers in 1985 to standardize coin grading ...
... Challenge coins are moderately inexpensive to design and produce ... The quality is relatively good, but if carried as a pocket coin, the patina (finish) tends to wear off exposing the base metal ... While a die struck bronze or brass coin is more expensive, the result renders a far superior product (numismatic quality) ...
... PCGS maintains a census of all coins they have graded since their inception, revealing the incidence of each date, mint mark, and reported variety of coin, as well as feature designations such as "prooflike" Morgan ... that allows non-dealer individuals to submit coins for grading ... professionals to estimate the rarity of specific coins, and over time these two data bases have revealed some coins once thought rare to be remarkably common, whereas others thought more common have ...
... A pattern coin is a coin which has not been approved for release, produced for the purpose of evaluating a proposed coin design ... They are collected or studied by many coin collectors because of their sometimes highly elaborate designs ...
... There were 102 households out of which 35.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.9% were married couples living together, 8.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.4% were non-families. 31.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older ...
Famous quotes containing the word coin:
“The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters in every quarter of the Old World, and but today, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some “Judæa Capta,” with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
—David Lodge (b. 1935)
“It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)