How did putting ridges on coins discourage the practice of "trimming"?

Question

How did putting ridges on coins discourage the practice of "trimming"?

Answer 1

I'm puzzled. The only point in trimming was to add to the value of the coin by having a little piece of the precious metal separately and additionally. I believe that the use of high-grade precious metals in coins ceased long before the technique of "milling" was invented, so I don't see the connection.

Answer 2

When coins were silver or gold, cutting a piece off

and saving the bits got you extra precious metal,

then with ridges people could see if it was still as

issued and worth its value..

Answer 3

In the old days when coins were made of real gold, unscrupulous traders would file tiny amounts of gold off the edges of each coin that passed through their hands, collecting the dust and selling it when they had collected enough, it helped show the preciousness of the coins and their value.

A great deal later to stop this practice, governments began to mill the edges of the coin themselves in a uniform way. That way you could tell by feel if the milling had been disturbed and the edge had been filed.

Now as time as come more into the present century, which coins have ridges and are in conjunction with a building or don't have buildings, or smaller or larger or even the weight, even down to which way the face of the head of the coin faces...all help the blind to distinguish quickly between the coins.

thanks and I hope I helped,

Hartdawg

Answer 4

because you could take the stuff and run like a person that took stuff and ran with a giant imp shooting laser beams at it