Coin Materials

[aoluain]

Hi All,

There seems to be a big emphasis on Gold, Silver, Coppper and Brass used in
the making of collectible crypto coins, which is all good.

I have seen coins listed here before in Aluminium , Stainless Steel, Platinum^{I think}
and Bronze ^{I think} but I was wondering lately what other types
of materials or even metal alloy's would be cool and different to produce
collectible coins in?

My first thought went to Jade, and I havent seen anything in Jade with a
Bitcoin theme, how cool would that be be create a Satoshi coin from a
distinctly oriental material?

http://numismatics.org/collection/1937.179.19388



As regards metal alloys there are many which have been used in ancient coinage
like Electrum which is an alloy of Gold and Silver. I'm not sure how difficult is is
to make these materials and how difficult it is to work with them, has anyone
considered different materials for making Collectible Crypto Coinage I wonder?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrum#Early_coinage



From that wiki page there are other alloys listed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinthian_bronze

It is thought to be an alloy of copper with gold or silver (or both)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatizon

also known as black Corinthian bronze, was a highly valuable metal alloy in classical antiquity.
It is thought to be an alloy of copper with the addition of a small proportion of gold and silver
(perhaps as little as 8% of each), mixed and treated to produce a material with a dark purplish patina,
similar to the colour of liver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchaloha

Panchaloha is traditionally described as an alloy of gold, silver, copper, zinc, and iron.

[1715415314]

1715415314

[Konfusioon]

I´m not sure how realistic it would be but I have always been fascinated with wooden coins. A well done wooden coin would be extremely pretty. Most likely a pain to produce in large quantities though.

[JanEmil]

Amber from some areas have the BTC color.

[Mbitr]

 Nice creativity and personally I’ve always had a fondness for Jade - hope you can come up with something workable. Problem with anything like this , would be that they any coin produced would pretty much have to be hand made and unique , ie , no cast etc and thus there would be a premium price . Still love this idea though

Always liked wood too as a material, but it’s been done a few times - just ask Theymos and TeeGUMES

[SaltySpitoon]

There are a lot of cool materials suitable for making coins, but interesting alloy blanks aren't widely available to mints. Electrum like you brought up is a workable enough material but its just not commercially available. Specialty materials could be done, but it just would have to be very small batches by artisans rather than mint struck coins. I do a lot of metalwork myself and I end up having to alloy everything myself because even though some alloys are just vastly superior in all regards to what we'd consider the standard, they just aren't vanilla enough to be commercially worth it for big companies to change their ways.

The blanking process requires ingots of the metal be poured, the metal is then rolled into sheets of a uniform thickness and cut out with dies into blanks. If the alloy doesn't have machinable properties like most old alloys that were simply cast and hammer struck, they'll never be available for people to make coins from.

[aoluain]

Amber from some areas have the BTC color.

Yup, there is an etsy seller with some Bitcoin themed Amber tokens, they look
really good and yea that very different.

https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/1159364809/bitcoin-coin-natural-baltic-amber?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_ie_en_ie_-art_and_collectibles-collectibles&utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAjwo8-SBhAlEiwAopc9W7w2Uir9qdT30a-uCIk3gT0jM_5CEoRJBrZdeVHcIiqTB_g8683RoBoCTNEQAvD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_13703307989_123455824479_530490400456_pla-314954652133_m__1159364809enie_480698533&utm_custom2=13703307989

Nice creativity and personally I’ve always had a fondness for Jade - hope you can come up with something workable. Problem with anything like this , would be that they any coin produced would pretty much have to be hand made and unique , ie , no cast etc and thus there would be a premium price . Still love this idea though

Always liked wood too as a material, but it’s been done a few times - just ask Theymos and TeeGUMES

Eh no Mbitr, I really dont have the knowledge, skill or tools to go working with Jade
as well as almost anything else. Just throwing out some ideas.

and @Konfusioon

Wood is a fascinating material purely because it is so workable by skilled people
and the choice and variety is immense.

I think we have all seen the first coin which Theymos has but I cannot locate an image
of it.


@SaltySpitoon, yea I realise working with metals is very specialised, I guess artisan
metalworkers would be able to produce one of or small batch pieces from different
and obscure metals.

[ChiBitCTy]

Amber from some areas have the BTC color.

Yup, there is an etsy seller with some Bitcoin themed Amber tokens, they look
really good and yea that very different.

https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/1159364809/bitcoin-coin-natural-baltic-amber?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_ie_en_ie_-art_and_collectibles-collectibles&utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAjwo8-SBhAlEiwAopc9W7w2Uir9qdT30a-uCIk3gT0jM_5CEoRJBrZdeVHcIiqTB_g8683RoBoCTNEQAvD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_13703307989_123455824479_530490400456_pla-314954652133_m__1159364809enie_480698533&utm_custom2=13703307989

Nice creativity and personally I’ve always had a fondness for Jade - hope you can come up with something workable. Problem with anything like this , would be that they any coin produced would pretty much have to be hand made and unique , ie , no cast etc and thus there would be a premium price . Still love this idea though

Always liked wood too as a material, but it’s been done a few times - just ask Theymos and TeeGUMES

Eh no Mbitr, I really dont have the knowledge, skill or tools to go working with Jade
as well as almost anything else. Just throwing out some ideas.

and @Konfusioon

Wood is a fascinating material purely because it is so workable by skilled people
and the choice and variety is immense.

I think we have all seen the first coin which Theymos has but I cannot locate an image
of it.


@SaltySpitoon, yea I realise working with metals is very specialised, I guess artisan
metalworkers would be able to produce one of or small batch pieces from different
and obscure metals.

There have been other Amber coins made before such as the one pictured below. I have always wanted to see if it was possible if a pure Ruthenium coin could be made. Below is a photo of ruthenium plated silver coins that I obtained a few years ago.

@Salty - we spoke about this topic a few times over the years. I think you said ruthenium would be too hard to make coins out of? Maybe I’m mistaken.

I’ve always entertained the idea of making coins out of glass. One of my good buddies growing up is a glass maker. He actually just sent me the instagram page to his buddy who now works in his shop who makes a bit more advanced glass stuff and said I should run my glass btc coin idea by him, so I may open that can of worms up again.

[SaltySpitoon]

@Salty - we spoke about this topic a few times over the years. I think you said ruthenium would be too hard to make coins out of? Maybe I’m mistaken.

Yep, while ruthenium is a platinum group metal, its more refractory than platinum which is itself already relatively difficult to work, the same reason premiums on platinum coins tend to be significantly more than gold/silver. Platinum itself wasn't a very easy to work with metal until starting in the 1980s groups of jewelers spent 20+ years developing best practices on how to work with it. As far as I'm aware, theres no standard for ruthenium outside of very specific niche applications ie machining mesh for catalytic converters or something of that sort. There are specialty ruthenium ingots out there, but you'd never find a mint to work it as I doubt the type of dies, strikes, etc needed to work it are commonly available knowledge.

Artisans can make some really neat stuff like coins out of amber, but try asking them to make you 100 and best case scenario they give you a couple year lead time. Craftsmanship is to be respected of course, but its a hard sell getting a customer to buy a coin for $1000 when its $30 of material and $970 of labor.

[SatsLife]

Here's a Tungsten coin...

[aoluain]

snip.

snip

Artisans can make some really neat stuff like coins out of amber, but try asking them to make you 100 and best case scenario they give you a couple year lead time. Craftsmanship is to be respected of course, but its a hard sell getting a customer to buy a coin for $1000 when its $30 of material and $970 of labor.

Thats a good point about working with tricky materials and producing quantities.
Roman Booteen comes to mind regarding, skills and time. Here is ChiBitCTy's thread
from last year > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5347708.0



@SatsLife - any more info on that Tungsten coin?

[minerjones]

@SatsLife - any more info on that Tungsten coin?

Made by Midwest Tugsten Service: https://www.tungsten.com/ who had a booth at Bitcoin 2022 in Miami this past week(end).
Here is a link to the coin purchase page: https://shop.tungsten.com/tungsten-bitcoin/
They also had some tops and cubes at the show!!

[ChiBitCTy]

I think we have all seen the first coin which Theymos has but I cannot locate an image
of it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5174217.msg52116521#msg52116521

[Cryptogreatdane]

@SatsLife - any more info on that Tungsten coin?

wow love this coin. Tungsten so heavy. Grabbing one. Wish they would have dated it though

Made by Midwest Tugsten Service: https://www.tungsten.com/ who had a booth at Bitcoin 2022 in Miami this past week(end).
Here is a link to the coin purchase page: https://shop.tungsten.com/tungsten-bitcoin/
They also had some tops and cubes at the show!!

[Mbitr]

I think we have all seen the first coin which Theymos has but I cannot locate an image
of it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5174217.msg52116521#msg52116521

Well found - I’ve spent ages looking for it- lol.
Apologies- going off topic - The interesting thing is Cyrus is using it as his/her avatar ??

[ChiBitCTy]

I think we have all seen the first coin which Theymos has but I cannot locate an image
of it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5174217.msg52116521#msg52116521

Well found - I’ve spent ages looking for it- lol.
Apologies- going off topic - The interesting thing is Cyrus is using it as his/her avatar ??

This used to be the main bitcoin symbol/image that you’d see when bitcoin was talked about in the news/on television etc, obviously back in the day, before New Liberty’s (which was then stolen by Cold Storage Coins owner) circuit board design that has since replaced it as the main image you see now in the news representing bitcoin. Cyrus doesn’t own the coin, prob just likes them image.

[wheelz1200]

I was always interested in precious stones and coins working together.  Kialara has done some but I'd like to see some more diamond, ruby, emerald, etc being worked into coins.  I know there was that btc/eth monster coin with the stones that hid the private key is there any others I missed?

[aoluain]

Thats the coin ChiBitCTy, thanks for that. I was wondering what the material is and after
following the various threads I quote theymos:

snip.

Are the front and back identical?

snip.

The copper doesn't go all the way through the coin. The obverse is just the semi-clear plastic stuff.

What is that firstly in the centre which looks white/silver and secondly the "plastic stuff"?

I was always interested in precious stones and coins working together.  Kialara has done some but I'd like to see some more diamond, ruby, emerald, etc being worked into coins.  I know there was that btc/eth monster coin with the stones that hid the private key is there any others I missed?

Ah yes, I never thought about gem stones and have a vague recollection of maybe
a Kialara coin. I dont use etsy but on a search for coins with gems I came across a
few makers producing coins and pendants with what seems like different approaches
and treatments.

MEGA Titanium BITCOIN heat anodized

Bitcoin pendant 14k solid gold with Diamonds

Real Genuine Diamond 0.60 Cwt. 21+ Grams Custom Piece Bitcoin 10K Gold Over Pendent

[krogothmanhattan]

How about Rhodium? Bought one of these so many years ago...

      https://silvergoldexpress.com/product/1-gram-rhodium-bullion-coin-cohen-mint/

[Honeybadger2014]

How about Rhodium? Bought one of these so many years ago...

      https://silvergoldexpress.com/product/1-gram-rhodium-bullion-coin-cohen-mint/

Wow, I don't know why, but I always thought rhodium was black

[krogoth]

How about Rhodium? Bought one of these so many years ago...

      https://silvergoldexpress.com/product/1-gram-rhodium-bullion-coin-cohen-mint/

Wow, I don't know why, but I always thought rhodium was black

And here is another

https://www.midasgoldgroup.com/product-details/rhodium-tuvalu-south-sea-dragon/