In movies they always show people biting gold coins to make sure their real. The idea (I think) is that gold is more flexible than say copper clad in gold and that you can actually bend the coin. So, is this true, or just made up for movies?
I’ve bent a 24K gold ring with my fingers, so I don’t doubt that you could bend gold coins with your bare teeth. Pure gold is surprisingly soft.
Sure, go ahead and try. ?Bite hard, please report the findings.
The way it has been explained to me was that gold coin forgery’s would be made of lead, so they were heavy like gold, and biting would dent lead but not gold, also reveling the grey lead under the gold plating…
My mother had either a 22 or 24K ring that she found a pain because it regularly got knocked out of shape and she worried that she may lose the stone it contained. She had it remade into a more robust ring some years ago but only after a jeweler friend suggested it.
Actually, the idea is that the *fake *ones bend, and the real ones don’t.
I couldn’t bend or dent one with my teeth when I tried it. I was using a 1oz 0.9999 pure gold Canadian maple leaf. I had to use decently robust tin snips to cut it up.
Yea, I always have to use my big tin snips when I cut up my gold coins too…wait, what? 
Hey Buddy! Defacing the Canadian currency is a bootbale offense.
I could go to a scientific supply company and get 0.9999 pure gold (we called it four-nine pure) for about 5 times the market rate.
or
I could go to the local pawn and coin shop and get the same purity for close to the market rate.
We used it to vapor deposit gold metal on surfaces for various analytical tools.
Austrian Philharmonic coins work well too. http://www.usagold.com/gold/coins/philharmonic.html