uncoined

Updated: September 15, 2025

In a country where the expense of the coinage is defrayed by the government, the value of the coin, even when it contains its full standard weight of gold and silver, can never be much greater than that of an equal quantity of those metals uncoined, because it requires only the trouble of going to the mint, and the delay, perhaps, of a few weeks, to procure for any quantity of uncoined gold and silver an equal quantity of those metals in coin; but in every country the greater part of the current coin is almost always more or less worn, or otherwise degenerated from its standard.

Adam Smith - An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Others hastened to the vaults of banks and to the coffers of the rich all of which were opened to the first comer on this fated occasion and brought entire bales of paper-money to enliven the blaze, and tons of coin to be melted down by its intensity. Henceforth, they said, universal benevolence, uncoined and exhaustless, was to be the golden currency of the world.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")

For George I only took a strong English knife of the best make, and the two thousand pounds worth of uncoined gold, which for convenience' sake I had had made into small bars. I also had a knapsack made that would hold these and nothing else each bar being strongly sewn into its place, so that none of them could shift.

Samuel Butler - Erewhon Revisited

In 1814 there was at least half a million paper money in circulation with a depreciation of 400 per cent. To avoid absolute ruin, the intendant had recourse to the introduction of what were called "macuquinos," or pieces of rudely cut, uncoined silver of inferior alloy, representing approximately the value of the coin that each piece of metal stood for.

R. A. (Rudolph Adams) Van Middeldyk - The History of Puerto Rico: From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation

In each of these is there coined money, both white and red, and some deal of gold uncoined, and of rings and brooches a few, and by estimation there is in each bag the same value reckoned in lawful silver of Upmeads and the Wolds and the Overhill-Countries. Take up each what there is, and do the best ye may therewith."

William Morris - The Well at the World's End: a tale