I was looking for replacement capsules for some of the 1oz coins, and some of their specs are fairly off. I measured a kookaburra with a digital caliper and here are the results. I also measured a ASE to make sure my caliper wasn't haywire. Kook published specs: 40.60mm diameter 4.00mm thickness Kook measured specs: 40.54mm diameter 2.78mm thickness Lunar S1 published specs: 40.60mm diameter 4.00mm thickness Lunar S1 measured specs: 40.52mm diameter 3.02mm thickness American Eagle published specs: 40.60mm diameter 2.98mm thickness American Eagle measured specs: 40.58mm diameter 2.82mm thickness The thickness on Perth's 1oz coins are significantly off from what they claim for it to be. So this means all the 1oz with dimensions of 40.6mm x 4mm will be affected as well, including koalas and the new crocodile bullion. I just thought this would be semi-useful info if you ever need it.
It says maximum diameter and maximum thickness. Surely there is a slight variation -Tolerance in them. Are we buying a Roll-Royces Engines? Nothing is precise unless you pays by thousands.
I'm not expecting thickness to be exactly 4.00mm. But do you think over 30% off of the published number is an acceptable tolerance? If they are not even certain about their own coins, then I'd rather see no dimensions publish than to see incorrect numbers published.
I just weighed all coins listed here, and they are correct. And while we're at it, the inner diameter of Perth's stock capsule is 41.02mm.
Surely the thickness of the coin would differ depending on where you measure it... maybe the given dimentions are for the thickest past. Does it specify that is the thickness at the rim or anything?
^ The thickest part of a coin or round is the rim, so that when you stack a bunch of coins on top of each other, both faces on the coins do not touch the next coin. Knowing this, the rim is where I measured the thickness. I do want to note that different parts of the rim around a coin does vary in thickness, with a tolerance of roughly +/-0.05mm. So the current coin's thickness of 2.80mm +/- 0.05mm is not even remotely close to 4.00mm. In fact, my 2014 kook does not even reach 3.00mm with error tolerance taken into account. Someone please feel free to verify these numbers with a caliper. If you don't have one, you can subjectively look at it and ask yourself if your kook is almost 50% thicker than any other non-Australian coin (ASE, maples, pandas, etc).
Fussy. It reduces the manufacturing costs to focus on the weight accuracy but allow for variability in diameter and thickness when you're making hundreds of thousands of coins, rather than insist on getting all three consistently accurate. That is why we just put a maximum out. I think if you measure more than two of our 1oz silver coins (not a big sample size) you'll probably find the variance is a lot less than your claimed 30% - 2.78 and 3.02 aren't that far apart, it is 8%.
Thanks for the response. Glad to hear someone from Perth clarify, so maybe you can pass the word on. First of all, I'll give credit where it's due. Your coins are all very precise within the same type of coins (ie, all 2011-2014 kooks has ~2.80mm thickness). The Lunar series 1 coin are also consistent with each other (3.00mm). I don't even have a problem that the kooks and the Lunar1's have slightly different thickness, because these are different series of coins. The 30% I was referencing to is from the huge difference between 2.78mm actual thickness compared to the 4.00mm that were in the specs. This is a difference of 42% to the actual thickness of the kooks/koala, and a 32% difference for the Lunar 1 series. If it's not important to have accurate dimensions, then why not just push it a little further and say the thickness is 7mm and diameter is 60mm? At least this will cover the Lunar series 2 dimensions as well. Publishing somewhat accurate dimensions has nothing to do with manufacturing costs. It only takes one of your employees 2 minutes to measure and record the dimensions for the entire series. You guys put a lot of work into the minting process to produce some of the most beautiful coins, so I find it hard to believe that something so simple like publishing an accurate spec would be hard. Other world mints had no problem measuring their coins correctly. Normally I couldn't care less about this type of minute detail, as long as the weight is correct. However in this specific case, it was hard has hell to source an aftermarket capsule that would take a 4.0mm coin. Your plastic capsules tend to come chipped because the plastic is more brittle than other capsules (I'm not complaining about it btw), but we can't even buy the original Perth capsules. Aftermarket replacement capsules were the only option, and none were 4mm thick. This was when I realized that the coins are not even close to 4mm, hence this thread in case anyone else like me searched for capsules based on published specs. This further came to my attention because the new Saltwater Crocodile bullion coin does not come with original capsules.
"we can't even buy the original Perth capsules" I've forwarded this discussion to the online manager to see why we can't just sell the capsules as another product. We don't want to publish "accurate" dimensions because then we have to commit to that and that would add costs rejecting blanks that don't fit this more accurate figure and that is likely to happen as production processes have a natural variance. Apart from people being able to source the right sized capsule, what other benefit is there to a more accurate spec that would justify the costs?
Would love to see Perth make available original capsules for all of their coins and have them added to either the bullion site or probably the Collector site "Gifts-section". http://www.perthmint.com.au/catalogue/all-gifts.aspx?Page=1 Big thumbs up Bron for your suggestion. H
Thank you, it would be great help if we can source original Perth capsules to buy. Just in the US, here's an example of two of many sellers that centralize their business on selling capsules, so the demand is obviously there. I already bought a few hundred of these H40 capsules, but will probably pick up more original Perth capsules if they become available. This is backwards thinking. Don't make the coins to fit arbitrary dimensions, but rather make the coins first, then measure and publish the dimensions of that series based on how the coin turned out. I'm pretty sure you guys make a prototype or a sample of the coin before mass production, so just take the measurements of the final prototype coins. Measure at 8 different locations around the rim, and take the maximum. If you account for tolerance and error in the number, then no blanks would have to be rejected unless the weight (not the thickness or diamter) is way off. This only takes a few minutes, and shouldn't add anymore to the cost since you're not actually changing the physical production of the coin. No other real usage I can think of except choosing capsules. But if getting a closer measurement is still somehow troublesome, then it's better to just omit it from the specs completely. At least this would let the customer know that he would have to measure it himself if he ever needed it, rather than seeing an incorrect dimension and relying on it. If a dealer bought thousands of capsules based on an incorrect published dimension and the coin does not fit properly, would Perth reimburse him for this mistake? Probably not, so the dealer would have to eat the loss.
How did you guys source spare Perth capsules? Or were these taken from coins that came with capsules?
The coins I've bought from Aliexpress are very reasonably priced, but they're significantly larger than the mint specs. I'm glad they're not smaller. I'd hate to think I was getting less silver for my money or anything like that! :lol: :lol: :lol:
I just thought of another important reason why your dimensions need to be close. Someone can use your incorrectly published thickness to counterfeit any 4mm thick coins. If copper or zinc coin (silver plated) were made to the exact size as the silver coins, it wouldn't weigh 1 troy oz because silver is more dense. So instead, they can increase the thickness of the counterfeit copper/zinc coin from 2.8mm to 4mm so that when you weight it, it has the correct weight of 1oz and supposedly correct dimensions of 4mm thick, because this was the number given for truth directly from the mint.
Makes no sense not to give the exact dimension's for people to check? I had this trouble and raised another thread as I wanted to check my coin was not counterfeit. They have very accurate coin presses so why not give people the correct figures? I may get flamed here but it's not helpful at all just putting 4mm.
