Official Coin Facts

There a lot of questions asked about coins.. First, what are the exact dimensions of a coin (weight, diameter and thickness).. Second, what is the coin made up of (metallic content).. Third, what is the Obverse and the Reverse sides of the coin.. Fourth, what is the actual mintage.. Fifth, when was the coin released (one Phil. coin was issued ahead of the date on the coin).. and other more questions.. when I joined the groups, I thought that I would get the answers, but most of the people are not that well informed or do not care .. somebody or any responsible group should ask the BSP to give the official data or facts..

actually, most if not all the coins released by the bsp has a version with a coa or at least a piece of paper with the information about the coin regarding metallic content, size, weight, mintage. The problem is that not everyone kept the boxes and coa

It will be good if everybody can contribute and provide a copy online for those certificates of each coin.. the problem is, when you look at the coins offered on the internet they give different information leading to confusion.. better still if we can make representation with bsp and we can directly ask them for the right info..

[url=http://lendingwanted.com]coin[/url] is very useful here in the Philippines. From the small one to big one, those coin can be use to every transaction we maid. Compare to other countries, our coin is the most useful one..

al.plata wrote:

There a lot of questions asked about coins.. First, what are the exact dimensions of a coin (weight, diameter and thickness).. Second, what is the coin made up of (metallic content).. Third, what is the Obverse and the Reverse sides of the coin.. Fourth, what is the actual mintage.. Fifth, when was the coin released (one Phil. coin was issued ahead of the date on the coin).. and other more questions.. when I joined the groups, I thought that I would get the answers, but most of the people are not that well informed or do not care .. somebody or any responsible group should ask the BSP to give the official data or facts..

What coin/coin set/s do you need info for? You need to have a question before an answer can be found! I'll help you guys out.

ok thanks.. but i am currently collecting philippine coins only, uspi and spanish era philippine coins.. there are conflicting data on the mintage because of different numbers reported but this is a minor concern, i want to know the exact dimensions of the coins like thickness.

al.plata wrote:

ok thanks.. but i am currently collecting philippine coins only, uspi and spanish era philippine coins.. there are conflicting data on the mintage because of different numbers reported but this is a minor concern, i want to know the exact dimensions of the coins like thickness.

Thickness is rarely, if not, never mentioned as it is of little importance. Usually people want to know the weight, purity, and diameter of a coin for business/financial/trading, or storage purposes (eg. how much should a merchant pay for a coin based on metal content/melt value? What capsule size should I choose to encapsulate and protect my coin?) Thickness comes in handy if you are wary of fakes; however, most experts don't need to know the thickness to come up with a conclusion.

I'll try to find the details on the spanish and uspi ones on the 2013 Krause World Coin Catalog when I'm free, and list them down in this post. Hopefully, they have added more details from the previous edition. Didn't really bother to check last time I browsed thru one.

thanks a lot, that is exactly my reason for asking the real thickness, because a friend told me that is one way to determine fakes from shady traders.. thanks in advance..

al.plata wrote:

thanks a lot, that is exactly my reason for asking the real thickness, because a friend told me that is one way to determine fakes from shady traders.. thanks in advance..

This is not really a good way to determine a coin's authenticity... but what I do sometimes is drop the coin in question against a wooden platform and hear how it clings. I'm so familiar with the sound of gold and silver (they actually sound very similar) that it's become so effective for me to differentiate a real silver coin from a non-silver or fake coin. But again, this is not always a good indicator and I do not recommend anyone using this as their only method of testing. It can work sometimes, but if the fake coin is made of silver then you could fall for the trap. I've seen a rare mint state silver dollar that looks so nice like an MS65 or higher that's god full lustre on it and everything but was actually fake. I thought it was real at that time but another numismatist who was much better than me at the time just said "it's garbage." The person who owned it said, "That's what I suspected because it looks too good to be true." LOL!