The coins mrwiskers refers to were large coins, cut up to make smaller coins - literally "making small change", but still keeping their monetary function.
The coins in the OP were cut up for some other purpose. In this case, the copper coins and tokens were being treated as copper bullion, with the copper being repurposed for something else.
What that something else is a mystery to me, too. I'd agree with David Graham that the end-goal seems to have been those rounded half-tubes, with the edge clips being merely scrap metal by-products.
I suspect the folks doing this didn't have the technology to actually melt and fashion copper for themselves. Which seems odd, given that they've got the technology to slice a copper coin clean in half. The goal to me seems to have been making a pipe or channel of some kind - which would have been quite a laborious process, to make a long pipe out of little coin-sized bits of copper. Surely it would have been easier to import some copper tubing instead? Unless the coin pieces were intended to repair damage to a copper pipe - but again, wouldn't it be easier to replace a tube, than laboriously chop up a whole bunch of patches for it?
Very odd.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 11/22/2021 3:43 pm
