Adjustors & Selectors – Who Handled Your Gold Coins?

[RWB]

Most collectors have some older silver coins and probably a few gold coins in their collections. We put them in plastic holders or 2x2 flips and try to protect them from damage and handling. But long before they reached our collections, these little gold and silver gems were scraped, fingered and banged around by as many as fifty mint employees. These were not the workmen who cut planchets or ran the upsetting mill, or the coiners who struck them – these were a group of women known as “Adjustors” or later, “Selectors.” They were paid $1.75 to $2.50 a day to scrape and file silver blanks and gold coins the mints produced.

 

The Adjustors sat at a large table in the mint building. Next to each was a small but accurate balance scale, a steel file and a rough leather pad for cleaning the file. When silver was being minted, a workman brought each Adjustor a box containing prepared planchets for quarters, halves or dollars. The adjustor then weighed every planchet, individually. Pieces of the correct weight were stacked in a separate box, the piles being either twenty or forty (for quarters) pieces high. Underweight pieces were tossed into a reject box for melting. Overweight pieces were given a quick scrape with the file, reweighed and added to the appropriate box. Planchets of the correct weight were then sent to the coining room where the coins were struck. Until about 1910, every quarter, half dollar and dollar planchet was checked by an Adjustor.

 

Gold got even more attention. Every planchet for all gold denominations was weighed and adjusted by hand before the coins were struck. Then, every struck coin was weighed to make sure it was correct. Lightweight coins were put in a reject box. Overweight coins were either rejected or sometimes adjusted by having the rim scraped.

 

The work of the Adjustors had two results. First, U.S. gold and silver coinage was maintained within very close tolerances. Second, hand inspection of gold coins meant that pieces with obvious defects were removed from the stream of gold coin flowing from the mints. (Women were preferred for the Adjustor’s job because they were considered to have more nimble fingers, worked faster, accepted lower pay and were felt to be more honest than men.)

 

European mints had been using machines to adjust planchets since at least the late 1880s, and by 1910 U.S. Mint Director A. Piatt Andrew decided to automate all planchet adjusting and eliminate the final gold coin examination. Andrew’s reforms took effect in March 1910, and all of the women Adjustors at the Philadelphia Mint were fired. Over the next few months, checks of the Special Assay coins revealed an increase in out-of-tolerance gold coin. Within a year, the former adjustors were rehired, now called “Selectors,” and resumed their old duties, this time limited to gold coins.

 

So, next time you examine your nineteenth and early twentieth century gold and silver, remember that your prized coin might have once had some pretty rough treatment.

 

 

(Copyright 2007. Based on research for the book Renaissance of American Coinage 1909-1915, publication pending.)

 

RWB.

[MunkyMan95]

Yeah, now the makers of the blanks trim the fat coins with a type of lathe before sending them to the mint. Saw it on 'Secrets of the US Mint.' Kind of cool to watch.

[Count_Erfit]

Why do I get the picture of "adjusters" having sore tongues from constantly licking their fingers?

 

And maybe the workbench?

 

[MikeKing]

excellent post

[MarkFeld]

Thanks for yet another interesting and informative post.

[TomB]

That is a very cool post. Is there any contemporary account of the everyday worklife of these adjustors and selectors?

[rrantique]

Thanks for a very informative post RWB.

[123cents]

Very informative post. Thanks! RWB.

[RWB]

Tom,

There's probably enough basic information to piece together what life was like for an adjustor and her family. We know about working conditions and can make some reasonable assumptions based on photos. Home/family conditions can be obtained from contemporary reports and documents by social reform organizations. We also know the names of many of the mint workers and can associate those with census data.

 

I haven't done this for anyone, but it could make an interesting project. Let me know if you're interested in taking this on and I'll provide data that I have.

 

RWB

[michael]

excellent thread

 

how then did off center gold coins get out of the mint??

[Big Daddy]

Great info.

[RWB]

Michael,

Probably through human error.

For example, in Dec 1907 there are complaints by director Leach about the Adjustors letting pass high relief $20 that he considered defective. The Adjustors' first priority was weight and if things were busy I can see occasional errors slipping through. Considering all the gold coin struck, it's amazing how few errors got through.

[michael]

thanks robert

 

and i can see why those offcenter gold coins are really rare to non existant

 

most of what i have seen are 5% or less off center

 

it amazes me that each gold coin struck was handled multiple times for close and personal inspection before they left the mint...........incredible to say the least