Why Many Coins Have Ridged Edges

Simple Things – Surprising Histories explored why many coins have distinctive ridges along their edges.

Coins are one of the most common objects we use every day, but have you ever wondered why many of them have tiny ridges around the edge? In this video, we uncover the surprising history behind coin ridges and explain how a simple design helped fight fraud centuries ago.

Ridged edges were adopted in 17th-century England to combat coin clipping, in which criminals shaved precious metal from the smooth edges of gold and silver coins and continued spending them at face value.

Using a knife or file, they shaved tiny slivers from the smooth edges of coins. Each coin looked almost unchanged, so it could still be spent at its full value, while the stolen silver or gold was collected and melted down. As more and more coins were clipped, people began losing confidence in the currency.

Sir Isaac Newton, warden of The Royal Mint, helped restore public trust through the Great Recoinage of 1696.

These newer coins featured precisely milled edges with tiny grooves known as reeding. While ridged edges had appeared on some coins before Newton’s time, machine production made them far more consistent and difficult to tamper with. If someone tried shaving metal from one of these coins, the missing ridges would immediately reveal that it had been altered.