Why do quarters have ridges
In a currency system consisting of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, only the quarter and the dime has ridges on them. It may seem as if the ridges on a quarter or a dime is there for adding to the aesthetic nature of the coins, but it is not so in reality. The main reason why we use ridged coins even today is because the visually impaired people make out which one is the dime and which one is the penny by feeling the ridges on them. Though counterfeiters usually target money bills of higher value, having ridges on a coin still makes it much harder to counterfeit them. However, in a time when the coins were made out of gold and silver in the United States, the ridges or “reeds” as they called them, played a big role.
As in any age, thieves and dishonest people were there also in those times and they often shaved the coins for stealing a small portion of the valuable metal of the coin. The coins they stole from lost their actual value, but the cheaters made sure to steal in such small proportion from each coin, that it was not noticeable without close scrutiny. The shaved coins would then be circulated without much problem, while the scrapped silver or gold would be stored until enough is gathered to be sold illegally to a metal merchant. In order to cope with such dishonesty, the craftsmen who crafted the coins started putting reedings on gold and silver coins. The measure proved useful because it became hard to shave the coins with ridges now as that would be easily noticed by everybody. Nickels and pennies never had ridges on them because even back then, they were not made out of any valuable metal like gold or silver. This is the history and also the reason why dimes and quarters have ridges on them. Although coins today are not made up of precious materials, they still are created with reedings, both for traditional value as well as for the visually impaired citizen’s convenience.