ON THE BEAT: Coinmon turns a nickel into 15 bucks
When Andrew Garon, the Coinmon, told me it took him anywhere from two minutes to 14 hours to cut a coin, I knew I had to see that. Here is a condensed version of one of his simpler cuts. The actual elapsed time was almost exactly five minutes, but he was working with smaller saw blades that he got by accident, and had to stop several times to change broken blades. Also, he drills his starter holes several coins at a time, so that part of the process wasn’t captured. All those caveats aside, it’s a fascinating and astoundingly quick process.
—F. Andrew Taylor
