Royal Mint 'Quality'

[Charliemouse]

People mean lots of different things when they talk about quality.  Probably not an exhaustive list, but here is how I would break it down.

1. Intricacy and fineness of the design.  This is a factor of the time and skill invested into the design and 'mastering'.  Constant across all individual coins of the same design.
2. Depth and detail in the coin.  This is a factor of the capability of the machines, and the ambition of the design.  Could vary between first and last strike.
3. Chance of individual coins having acceptable levels of faults.  This is a factor of the quality and maintenance of the machines and raw materials, the quality of handling, the ability and willingness of the QC process to find issues.  Varies coin to coin.

Number 1 is going to be very subjective.  RM release a lot more designs each year than they used to, and whether one is better than another varies with personal opinion.

Number 2, the relief and detail inherent in the designs, have clearly worsened.  e.g. In bullion, it is obvious to see the newer sovereigns are flatter and more 'jelly' like than they used to be.  I don't think that is disputable.  And with the albeit limited sample of microscope photos I have taken, you can clearly see the detail in proof sovereigns has diminished over the last e.g. 30 years.  And there is an obvious trade off in the real world.  A highly ambitious design will probably cost more, be harder to mint, and will generate more faulty coins.

Before this is a 100% Royal Mint bashing exercise, I would say that I saw similar reduction in detail with Perth Mint coins across the same time period.

Whether 3 has become worse in absolute terms, I honestly don't know.  From all the voices on the forum, clearly it has.  But I haven't been collecting long enough, and I don't own enough 'older' proof coins to see that objectively.  Coin for coin, I have no idea what the return rates used to be.  I think the return rates for everything, from cars to lightbulbs, is much higher than it used to be (for all sorts of reasons), so again that is very difficult to compare.  I know that people are now able to scrutinise coins in far more detail.  I also know that people on this forum are far more discerning than the average punter.

My personal experience buying proof coins from RM is that the first time I receive a proof it probably has a 70% chance of having unacceptable levels of faults.  I will send it back and the second time it will have maybe a 20% chance of having unacceptable faults.  This has happened multiple times.  The difference between those numbers is too large to be a coincidence.

So... one must conclude that RM has a systemic bias, either intentional or not, between the first release of coins and later fulfilling of returns.  I am sure conspiracy theories abound.  To be explicit, an example of an unintentional bias could be that the returns are fulfilled with later runs, where they have learned about the characteristics of the coin, are producing lower numbers, and therefore the chance of coins having errors is reduced.  And example of an intentional bias could be that they believe the majority of their sales will be to people who don't scrutinise the coins closely, so they hold back the higher quality coins for those that bother to complain.

Discuss.

[Charliemouse]

This is what I mean by number 2 above.  It has nothing to do with 'faults', which is number 3.  It is about depth and intricacy of the design.  Every individual coin for each year will be about the same.

[SidS]

With regards to point 2, nearly all national mints have been reducing the relief of their currency coins.

The US quarter has been deteriorating since 1998. Here are some later examples I found after a quick search. The descent into spaghetti hair is very obvious.

 

Edited March 18 by SidS

[TeaTime]

I have been collecting US quarters for a number of years and that is the first time i have noticed the lower case 'u' used in the lettering.

Looks like i haven't been scrutinising my coins as diligently as i thought...

[Charliemouse]

1 hour ago, TeaTime said:

I have been collecting US quarters for a number of years and that is the first time i have noticed the lower case 'u' used in the lettering.

Looks like i haven't been scrutinising my coins as diligently as i thought...

Just for interest, the quarter uses a font called Albertus (Identifont - Albertus).  It has a stem on the capital U, which does make it look lower case.