At some point I received in change, in Little Rock, Arkansas, a nickel sized coin.
"10 GROSCHEN 1952 REPULIK OSTERREICH "
It feels like it is made of aluminum.
By golly, Google IS my friend.
So, what’s the question?
Merely an attempt at conversation.
I am curious why it is made of aluminum, and how it came to be in such a comparatively odd place.
What is a 1952 Austrian dime doing in Arkansas, once producer of the most aluminum in the world? Was the metal mined here? 
Nice Larry King imitation, BTW.
If so, it’s more appropriate for MPSIMS than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Spawning?
I suppose that is a possibility.
Well, technically, it’s not a dime, I’d say, but that’s a quibble.
It probably came from a coin shop. There’s one near me that has a small flat try full of foreign coins. Round square, smooth edges, milled edges, knobbly edges, holes in the middle, european, south american, asian, you name it. They sell them for 5 or 6 coins for a dollar there. They buy them from travelers who come home with change and don’t know what to do with it.
When Ralf Jr. was little and losing his baby teeth, I bought a few of these and would put one of them (along with a dollar or 2) under his pillow. We used to tell him that the Tooth Fairy must have just come from (insert country name here).
I think it’s more likely that it came from someone who visited Austria and kept a bit of the small change as a souvenir.
And I’ve come across aluminium being used for very small denomination coins from other countries: it’s a cheap metal, and stand up to a reasonable amount of wear, so why not?
Obviously it has held up since 1952, but I would think aluminum would scratch very easily.
But it doesn’t have enough mass to spin! When could is a coin if you can’t spin it?
and what good is a spell checker that can’t tell the difference between “could” and “good”?
In 1951, a large sample of bauxite was mined in Pulaski County, Arkansas, and was subsequently shipped by rail to Alcoa in Arkadelphia. From here, it was smelted into an aluminum ingot, which was eventually transported by ship to a port in France.
Then…