Hey guys, I need to come out of lurking and ask if anyone else has experienced this...
I've bought a cheap set of jewelery scales (accurate to 0.1g) and decided to test how good they were by using what I thought were "known weights". A 1oz .999 coin should read 31.1g.
I started by weighing one of my philharmonics - it came out as 31.6g. I bought this coin from CID (sealed in mint tubes) so I assumed it must be the scales that were dodgy. I tested a few more phils and they all came out at 31.6... two were 63.2g, ten were 315.9g and so on.
But then I weighed a maple - it came out at 31.5g
Then an Eagle - 31.3g; Libertad - 31.3g.
I decided to weigh a coin that I knew had definitely not been handled. I (very carefully) cracked open an encapsulated Kookaburra... 31.9g!
Maybe it's to do with the surface area on the scales, I thought. So I placed two phils on top of each other on the scale (reading 63.2g), removed the top one and replaced it with an Eagle - it came out as 62.9g. Surface area on the scales remained the same, but the weight apparently changed.
To remove any seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of CID coins, I hunted down an older Eagle I purchased from a trusted numismatic dealer my family has bought from for decades. This came out exactly the same as the CID-bought coin.
Gold sovereigns I have tested have come out exactly as what they should be (8.0g).
I'm sure the scales must be dodgy somehow. But given the consistent variance in the weights, logically the only conclusion I can draw from this is that these 1oz silver coins genuinely weigh different amounts.
pics:
2009 Maple (CID)
2009 Kookaburra (CID)
2009 Eagle (CID)
2001 Eagle (local dealer)
1912 sov (local dealer)
2 x Philharmonics
Philharmonic + Eagle
Has anyone here accurately weighed their coins?