How To Straighten Bent Silver Coins

It always makes me think when I see the huge ploughs, rotavators and other farm machinery ripping through the soil, “It is little wonder that the humble, usually thin, hammered silver coin suffers so many various injuries.”

- Charles Abbeyville

How many times over the passing centuries has the plough share moved them around? They get scratched, more so in really stony ground – caught by the plough share, the disc and the harrow – and correspondingly bent, twisted and torn. If the rotavator catches them and flings them through the air they can potentially end up in a really bad state and there is no reason why this should not happen several times to a single coin. Most silver coins, however, miraculously survive somewhat unscathed – although this survival is of course subject to both a matter of time and chance.

If you haven’t already found a bent silver coin don’t worry, I’m sure you will! Of course the proverbial sod’s law says that the bent one will always be one of the rarer types.

I once found a hammered coin of Off a (Fig.1) that initially looked like a candidate for the silver scrap box. It was bent almost double and torn, with about 15% missing and had severe cracks across it – some so bad you could see right through them. Of course with reference to the previously mentioned law, this turned out to be a unique Off a Rex type coin (Fig.2). However, I did manage to rescue it and it now sits in someone’s coin collection.